By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net
YOU may be too trusting as you go and click on the link that you see on your friend’s site only to find out that the link was a malware.
During the Cybersecurity: Protecting the Business forum, Vu Huy Nguyen, field research consultant of McAfee Avert Labs said that social networking sites are now becoming more vulnerable to attacks since the users within the networks are trusted.
“Be suspicious. Be wary. It’s more of protecting yourself. Users should be aware and beware. When they let the guard down, that’s when attack happens,” Nguyen said.
According to Nguyen, Asia faces these unique threats because users are often naïve.
He also said that the high growth in Internet users in Asia resulted in higher rate of cybercrimes.
“Eighty percent of the malware attacks are money-motivated,” explained Nguyen.
Nguyen attributed the high rate of cyber crime to the lack of government regulation and laws for some Asian countries.
Also, he related that governments react to cybercrimes depending on its severity.
In the United States, the National White Collar Crime Center, The National Public Survey on White Collar Crime in August 2005 stated that regulatory agencies attended to only one out of seven incidents of Internet fraud.
In the 2007 Internet Crime Report, the National White Collar Crime Center, Bureau of Justice Assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded 206,884 cybercrime cases, with Internet auction fraud as the most reported offense, followed by non-delivered merchandise.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the anti-cyber crime bill also known as “Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2008″ is yet to be passed into a law.
