Swinburne University: Data Privacy and Cyber Crime in Mobile Business

This report examines the evolving landscape of data privacy and cybercrime, particularly within social media and mobile business contexts. It delves into the various forms of cybercrime, including identity theft, cyberstalking, botnets, phishing, and PUPs, and explores their causes and symptoms. The report highlights the role of mobile companies and the generation of big data in the market, while also analyzing the risks associated with the use of social media and online payment methods. It discusses the objectives of cybercrime, targeting individuals, property, and governments, and provides a critical analysis of the symptoms, causes, and potential recommendations for addressing these issues. The report also includes a detailed discussion on various cyber threats and vulnerabilities, emphasizing the need for robust security measures and user awareness to mitigate risks. The report concludes with a call for action, emphasizing the importance of continuous awareness and proactive measures to protect against the evolving threats in the digital world.

Running Head: DATA PRIVACY AND CYBER CRIME PERTAINING TO SOCIAL
MEDIA AND MOBILE BUSINESS
DATA PRIVACY AND CYBER CRIME PERTAINING TO SOCIAL MEDIA AND
MOBILE BUSINESS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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ExecutiveSummary
This paper aims to look at the various situations of crime and harassments that is faced on the
internet. Besides these incidents that are predominant on social media pages or websites,
threats from fraudulent calls/ messages, money laundering and theft of vital and confidential
documents also exist. The paper further relates the various technological devices or attempts
being used to commit such crimes in the cyber world through mobiles and computers. It
depicts the situations of the mobile business companies and big data pool that is being
generated to adapt the market and improve products and their sales through these processes.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Symptoms...............................................................................................................................3
Causes....................................................................................................................................4
Recommendation and Critical Analysis:................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References:.................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
In today’s world, mobile phones have become an integral part of the modern lives.
These have evolved as advantageous scientific developments that are essential to the
competitive era of globalization. The challenges in security and vulnerability of the internet
usage has considerably led to the increase in the crime rates. Data piracy and cybercrimes are
terms quite popular in this era. The pool of such data has been used by several organizations
and commercial sectors to improve their line of production and improvise on the products
based on the market needs (Munné 2016). The online sources provide a platform to crimes
where the criminals get actively and aggressively engaged in the criminal activities.
‘Cybercrime’ has been confirmed and acknowledged as an official list of typical forms of
crime where technology is used in acts of stealing money, information, records and items of
personal importance, used to shame people or blackmail them (Government.nl 2019). The
mobile companies play a significant role and have developed mechanisms to create
awareness and controls of such activities by enabling devices with improvised and updated
security systems. Further, the paper illuminates on the facts of developing a serious control
system. Every nation has also assigned a different line of police and detective force that
specifically examines and works on the cyber section of crimes.
Discussion
The paper discusses the major symptoms, causes and treatments undertaken by these
mobile phone companies to protect as well as use customer information. With the advent of
digital mediums, banking, purchase of garments, accessories, medicines, grocery, bill
payments and most other means of necessary payments have reduced to a touch or click. This
requires banking systems that are accessed online through the generation of online personal
identification numbers, using Net Banking, Mobile Banking and Unified Payment Interfaces
(UPIs) like Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay and so on. It is just not a monetary loss but
hazardous life threatening situations like stalking, causing public embarrassment or a
situation of inflicting personal harm like engaging in situations of trafficking.
Symptoms
The cyber world enables one to access to the various worlds around one through the
click or touch on a screen. This occurs when one is too active across the various cyber
platforms like the platforms of social media, the e-commerce websites or online retail shops
and using online methods of payments through debit or credit cards besides net banking and

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UPIs. However, all one needs to do is ensure regular change of password s and not sharing
passwords, One-time passwords (OTPs), Telephonic Personal Identification Numbers
(TPINs) or PINs. This requires efficient checking and alertness to minimize cybercrimes.
Social media are dangerous platforms where people tend to link their accounts like Facebook
to their personal works.
Causes
The social media is a form of media that helps grow communication with the use of
internet. The principal goal of social media is to connect people and deliver a definite kind of
outcome. The researches on social media depicts how social media uses the information
shared in between consumers to facilitate the business market (Mohammed 2015). The
security and privacy system can also be improved through these information. Cyber bullying
and cybercrimes like molestations also surface in the modern times with the advent of
internet. Additions to internet and social media in the present times guides consumers and
parents of teenagers and adults who are exposed to the risk of data mining, cybercrime as
well (Perera, 2015). The mobile companies, however, manage to play an important trick on
the consumers to assure them with data protection and end to end encryption but use the
consumer data and request for access to personal data like e-mail accounts, gallery/
photographs, contacts, files and other documents. These requests or permissions, if not
provided, refrains one to use a particular feature of the phone or a particular application.
These information that are used also help in turning the various government policy
influential. Malicious comments and cyberbullying are things that affects all the individuals
and even celebrities. Cyber security increases as the days advance and modern technologies
come up (Reddy and Reddy 2014). These crimes are made through computers and mobiles
used by people across the globe. Hence, use of anti-virus technologies are installed in the
computers (Us.norton.com, 2019). These are software that protect the computers from being
affected by any e-virus. E-viruses are malfunctioning software or malwares that are aimed at
hacking and locking computers by targeting weak IP addresses (Smitherson 2019). These are
prone to occur when one downloads things from an unknown website or remotely located
servers in the web world. It also occurs when one is not in a situation to work from own
computer or mobile phones but uses other people’s devices to access own accounts in social
media or banking sectors. The existence of data, cache or cookies in the other person’s
desktop, mobile phone or any other device is also a prime reason for theft (Simo 2015).
However, one needs to be careful while accessing such mediums that ask for personal

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information. The use of various mediums of software or applications is also crucial. It is so
because in many situations, these applications can get hacked or have a chance of losing data
in this method.
Cybercrime is same as any other crime which uses a tool to commit an offence, which
is the computer in this case. A criminal may use any form of a device to get access to any
organization’s website, government data, and information of confidential nature in the
corporate or government sector is a typical form of cybercrime. There is a cyber-market to
sell these information to the prospective buyers at huge amounts. The black market using bit
coins as a currency to trade substances and information is also a rapidly growing market for
corruption. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) brought out the fact of using
unfair means during the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States to gain back the trust
of the people in the voting system and the government, stating the breach of privacy and data
tampering during the same (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019). The use of data to
bargain and barter substances virtually are also popular in online games and similar gaming
platforms. These tactics are also used by spies and terrorist groups across the globe to target
specific acts of terrorism and gather information for the planning of the same (Taylor 2019).
The crimes that are occurring in the cyber world are categorized into two zones of crimes that
aim to target devices or network as well as crimes that uses the devices to engage in criminal
activities. The former pertains to malwares, viruses and DoS attacks while the latter pertains
to phishing emails, identity theft and cyber stalking.
The three main objectives of cybercrimes are mainly — individual, property and
government.
 Individual —This category pertains to the involvement in cybercrime that
aims at an individual, who is distributing illegal or malicious information
through online sources. This can be cyber stalking, trafficking or even
distributing pornographic substances.
 Property —This is a situation that is common in the real – life situations of
criminal activity where a criminal or intruder illegally, willfully and
unlawfully manages to acquire one’s property. This is usually when a hacker
successfully gets access to one’s bank details or card details and uses those to
fulfill his own pockets (Munné, 2016). The access to funds can be received
very easily with the digital banking procedures, now-a-days. These people

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usually run online phishing scams to get hold of people with weak banking
systems or ones who do not know the same.
 Government —This is a form of crime, which is least common. However,
such situations can bring down an entire government system and lead to the
fall of an economy in many significant ways. This is a situation where these
governments are at a risk from other governing bodies of the other countries or
from terrorist organizations and groups in a situation of antisocial activity.
The various types of cybercrimes include the following:
 DDoS Attacks: These are employed to create a situation where an online
service is not accessible or blocked. This is done by taking down the network
by an attempt to overwhelm the site with traffic situations from the various
sources. Huge infected devices called Botnets are devised by a process of
depositing malware on the computer of the respective user. It is after this that
the hacker makes his or her way into the user’s system.
 Botnets: These are networks that are created by computers, which are in a
compromised state so that they cannot be detected or remain hidden. It is after
this that the hackers send spams in order to attack the user’s computer by these
botnets. This is then used to perform malicious activities by the aid of these
malwares.
 Identity Theft:This is a situation where the criminal gains entry into the user’s
personal information and steals these information to access the confidential
documents and files (Bendovschi, 2015). The person claims to be someone
else by duplicating the user’s profile to gain insurance or tax benefit or plan a
criminal activity and claim benefits from the government in the user’s name.
This engages activities of phishing through emails, hacking or retrieving any
personal information through social media access.
 Cyber Stalking: This is a type of online harassment that engages the user to be
subjected to an overabundance of online messages, emails and intimidate the
victim. This usually occurs on the social media platform where the fear is
mostly concerned with being afraid of the unknown harms or threatening as
well as safety and public embarrassment (Prochaska, Coughlin, and Lyons
2017).

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 Social Engineering: This is a method that involves criminals to undertake
direct actions to contact the user over a phone call or an email. This is
followed by gaining the confidence of a person, posing as a customer service
agent. This is followed by promotional offers or informing that person of some
threat, followed by the enquiry about essential details like bank details and so
on. The criminals also tend to add the user on their friend list through social
media and once that is done, they not only gain access to the user’s account
but also sell their information to other parties at a relatively high cost.
 PUPs: These are potentially unwanted programs that are comparatively less
threatening when compared to other criminal activities. This is done by
installing necessary software in the system of the user like, even the pre-
downloaded apps or search engines. This can include a spyware as well as an
adware that traces the moves, talks and even listens to talks, calls and
messages (Panda Security Mediacenter, 2019).
 Phishing: This is a type of attack that involves hackers to email URLs or
attachments. Though most of these are filtered and flagged as spam by the
email software or companies, yet many are unable to get traced, as evident in
daily lives, once a person opens his or her mail box.
 Prohibited/Illegal Content: This includes the distressing videos, offensive
content like those of a sexual harassment, intense violence or criminal
activities like murders. This exists on the internet and can be observed every
day as a part of the dark web, from a network of anonymous nature (Kumar
and Patel 2014).
 Online Scams: These are usually scams that promise one of unusual amounts
of money and a malware enters the device once a person clicks on these offers.
 Exploit Kits: This is a vulnerable bug that gains access over a user’s computer
to purchase or sell products or criminal tools to use against any other person or
for any other activity, endangering the user.
Recommendation and Critical Analysis:
The only way to keep cautious in such situations is to realize the situation when any
of such activities occur, remain alert and continuously update the systems on the computer or
phones. This will increase the chance to avoid threats of the above nature at the very first
stage.

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Creating awareness programs and situations that help to illuminate customers to
produce limited documents after checking the authenticity of the website or source. It
encourages to popularize such activities of fake nature as they are usually, categorically
limited (Paul and Aithal 2018).
Use of own devices or removing and clearing data and history is essential to make
sure that the device does not store history that can be traced by anyone to meet his or her
ends. This will reduce the effect created on the stakeholders who fear loss of data and money
in these situations (Arief,Adzmi, and Gross 2015).
Conclusion
This is a situation that can occur in any situation. Hence, one should be aware of the
technical glitches in a system to identify immediate risks. Such activities should be avoided
that engage any unknown calls or messages asking the user to do something or share
something that is of doubtful nature. Help from the department of cybercrime and police
should be taken in serious situations. One can also use the various tools or anti-virus software
that are authentic and can use these to protect their systems (Us.norton.com, 2019).
Accessing illegal or doubtful websites or pornographic sites should be done with prior
caution. Risks to stake holders as well as reduction in radioactive products and exposure to
harmful radiations will reduce chances of cancer as the devices tend to lower their SAR value
(Mohammed, 2015). This leads to efficient application and utilization of knowledge to use
the internet and its services ethically and safely.

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