Effects of cybercrime on society

Cybercrime has become a major threat in our society and is very rampant among youths and has gotten beyond abnormality. While there is an increase in the number of sentencing in courts, cybercrime is still on the rise.

Cybercrime is a global phenomenon and in Nigeria, the figures are unprecedented especially among the youths. It is said a great percentage of cybercrime perpetrators in Nigeria are students in various higher institutions.

The growing acceptance of cybercrime, otherwise known as yahoo-yahoo has also added to increasing numbers of fraudsters in the Nigerian society.

Cybercrime, also known as internet-assisted crimes, is common in today’s society and has taken different forms, including internet fraud, identity theft and invasion of privacy, hacking, counterfeiting and forgery, computer viruses, child pornography, spamming, and cyber bullying.

These crimes cover a wide spectrum of offenses, but at one extreme are those that involve serious violations of personal or corporate privacy, like attacks on the security of data stored in digital sources and the use of unlawfully obtained digital information to threaten a corporation or an individual.

Identity theft, which is on the rise, is also at this end of the spectrum. Transaction-based crimes like fraud, the sale of child pornography, digital piracy, money laundering and counterfeiting are situated in the middle of the continuum.

The deliberate alteration of data by individuals working for businesses or government agencies for financial gain or political ends is another aspect of this sort of crime. Crimes that aim to interfere with how the internet functions as a whole are at the other extreme of the spectrum. These include activities like spam, hacking, and denial-of-service attacks against specific websites, as well as cyber terrorism—the use of the Internet to terrify the public and even cause deaths.

These crimes at different levels are targeted at specific victims who are connected to the internet either through their computers or mobile phones and It could be very evident that the culprits leverage the anonymity supplied through the Internet.

It should be noted that cyber-attacks caused by these crimes are financially devastating, disrupting, and upsetting to people and businesses in different institutions.

Greed, peer influence, bad leadership and poor parenting are other elements that tempt youths to engage in cybercrime. If caution is not exercised, young folks who have been raised and taught in the trade will do more harm to society.

Zainab Adewale, Ibadan.