No one wants to be a victim of crime and it could be even more devastating if you are a victim of cyber crime. Shocking figures given to us at a recent Police Crime Commissioner briefing shows there has been an increase of 245% in online crime, nationally, in the past year. (May 2016 to May 2017)
My personal view of this is that online crime will continue to grow as our lives become more and more dependant on online services. Police resources have been diverted away from traditional crime to trying to tackle this surge in online crime which is becoming increasing more sophisticated.
As an IT professional myself, it is a constant learning curve, which takes a great deal of time to keep updated on the latest threats and ways of tackling the risk of crime.
If you want to know more about how you can protect yourself from online crime there are a number of practical steps you can take.
Education, education, education! Take advantage of free schemes such as Digital Eagles from Barclays Bank. These systems are open to anyone and they also offer a wide range of online courses that you can do at home. The nearest Digital Eagles workshops are in Basildon, so not too far away.
RRAVS, in Rayleigh also run a computer course which appears to be targeted at the elderly, although I have not confirmed that with them.
There are other valuable resources online that you can check out for further information, it's important to keep your computer skills current.
What ever you use the internet for online crime can take many forms so here is a selection of useful links to check out. If you know of any other links that might be of interest to other readers please let me know and I'll add them.
