How to prevent cyber crime

UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) launched a new campaign aimed at cutting cyber crime, especially amongst young people. It means to warn teen about the dangers of hacking and using online tools for cyber-attacks. Meanwhile, this campaign educates parents about the dangers of cyber crime after analysis of hacking investigations found the average age of suspects to be 17-years-old  from the past year.

One of the common forms of cyber-crime is distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can knock out websites by flooding them with data. Younger hackers have also increasingly used software called Remote Access Trojans (RATs) that allow people to remotely monitor and take full control of another computer. 

Warning signs of cyber crime listed by NCA

• Is your child spending all of their time online?
• Are they interested in coding? Do they have independent learning material on computing?
• Do they have irregular sleeping patterns?
• Do they get an income from their online activities, do you know why and how?
• Are they resistant when asked what they do online?
• Do they use the full data allowance on the home broadband?
• Have they become more socially isolated?

According to the signs, we're basically all cyber criminals. I think the things teens would do on the Web is overshare on Twitter and Facebook, post on Instagram, text and listen to EDM on Spotify or play Star Wars: Battlefront.

We understand the risks associated with cyber crimes. Then how to prevent cyber crimes around us? A VPN stops websites or hackers spying on you by hiding data that could identify you. It's important to connect to VPN when you connect to the Internet from a hotel room, even over a wired connection. Your data stream can be captured by any other user of that network. If you haven't own a VPN, you can wait for Xmas VPN deals.