February 6th, 2009:

Cyber crime is a common phenomenon today. Because of the fast advancement of technology, more sophisticated software are developed and used as weapons for committing complex and sometimes untraceable cyber crimes. Everybody can be a potential victim. However, there are reports stating that a large percentage of cyber crime cases have women as victims. There are actually various women who were subjected to various different types of cyber crimes. However, many women prefer to ignore the harassment they experienced.

Cyber crimes against women

One of the most common crimes on the Internet committed against women is cyber stalking. This crime involves stalking the victim by following her online affairs. The stalker usually enters the same chat rooms and discussion groups in which the victim is a member of and floods her with obscene emails. Another cyber crime against women is cyber pornography. This involves blackmailing the victim to make her pose nude. There is also another type of cyber crime which is called morphing. This crime involves the posting of a computer-manipulated photo of a nude woman on a website. Various women are also the common victims of email spoofing. Email spoofing usually happens in online dating. Usually, a man takes the identity of someone else and sends romantic emails to a woman, promising her a date, but then she should first send a certain amount of money to her date.

How to help stop cyber crime

If you have been a victim of cyber crime, you should immediately report it to the authorities. You should not suffer in silence and wait for the next cyber crime to strike.

As Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, Valentine’s Day e-cards are proliferating. However, sweet and romantic e-cards are not the only ones on the loose. Spammers and other cyber criminals actually use this time of the year to spread more malware. This is why it is necessary that you take extra caution when opening emails on Valentine’s Day.

You might be surprised when you see an e-card from an unknown source upon logging into your email account. However, don’t get overly excited even if you think your crush might have sent you an e-card. Chances are, this e-card came from spammers and it may carry a link that would take you to a site that hides malware.

How to avoid malware

When you receive an e-card from an unknown source, you should be skeptical. Don’t click the link you may find in the email because it may lead to the automatic download of malicious software to your system. If the sender is a legitimate company, visit the official site by typing the URL in the browser rather than by following the link. You should not also respond to the sender of the e-card. It is better to delete the anonymous e-card that you suspected of having malicious content than take the risk of installing a software that could weaken the resistance of your system and make your computer vulnerable to viruses, worms, and hackers. Another thing that you should do is to install an anti-virus and anti-spam software to help you detect content that could pose threat to your system.

Got problem with spams? One of the major problems of Internet users today is the flooding of spams on their email accounts. The huge bulk of spams that enter various email accounts can lead to more serious problems than simple email overloading. Spams may actually contain malicious content that could damage the system or worse, spyware that could make you a potential victim of hackers. Today, netbots and spambots are getting more and more sophisticated that it is not easy to evade them. One of the ways through which you can prevent spammers from accessing your email address is by keeping it private. But what if you need to buy a product online or you want to join a forum, and the sites require you to post your email address online? Is there anything that you can do to prevent spammers from harvesting your email address?

Effective spam prevention tool

There is an answer to this dilemma — the email address protector. Through the email address protector, you can just post your email address on a webpage or join an online forum without worrying about exposing it. An email address security protector can be downloaded online. There are actually various sites that offer the email address protector for free. However, there are some sites that provide this tool for a specific amount. The software that could cloak your email address from spambots is easy to download. You just have to follow the easy-to-understand instruction written on the site that advertises email address protection software programs.