Answer

How to Prevent CyberCrime

Cybercrime is described as any crime that occurs online. According to Swanson, Chamelin, Territo and Taylor (2019), cybercriminals often commit crimes by targeting computer devices and networks. Cybercrime varies from security breaches to identity thieves. Other cybercrimes include cyberstalking, harassment, bullying, and child sexual exploitation. Swanson (2019) indicates that terrorists collaborate online, conducting terrorist activities and offenses into cyberspace. However, experts have developed different measures of preventing cybercrime.

According to Swanson (2019), individuals should start by securing their personal information such as last name, banking information, home address, school name, social security number, and telephone number. Individuals can achieve this by avoiding sharing personal information over email, social media sites, or instant messaging. Online users should ensure their passwords are strong. When creating a password, it is advised to use more than seven to sixteen different characters such as upper and lower case letters, punctuations, numbers, marks, and special characters such as %, $, &, and * (Swanson, 2019). Moreover, individuals should avoid sharing passwords and usernames.

Online shopping has become a common norm. Thus, when shopping online, individuals should use secure websites only.  According to Swanson (2019), a secure website will often have a symbol such as a lock which indicates that it employs software to secure the user’s personal information. Individuals should be aware of phishing scams. Internet users should never connect to a link within an email. Preferably, they should ensure that a website is legitimate, open a new window and access the website by typing the address in the new window’s address bar (Swanson, 2019).  Moreover, online gamers should ensure that their security software operates for that significant game.

Conclusively, to prevent cybercrime, individuals are advised to avoid sharing their personal information, confirm an online shopping web site’s credibility, and use strong passwords.