What is CYBER BULLYING ?

Do you know 70% of the students report seeing frequent cyber bullying? In the matter of fact, any bullying that involves electronic technology is considered as cyber-bullying. For example of cyber bullying such as MEAN text messages or emails, spreading of RUMORS, EMBARASING pictures, videos, websites or fake profiles through email or social networking sites.

WHAT IS THE MEDIUM BEEN USED FOR CYBER BULLYING? 

Phone is the most common medium for cyberbullying as people tends to use phone to go online regularly. Facebook is the most frequent use of social media for cyber bullying.

WHO MIGHT BE CYBER BULLIED?

Cyber bully can happen to anyone, but male are more likely to become the victim of cyber bully than female. People that are hyper-networking (spend more than three hours per day on social media) have a higher chance to become the victim of cyberbullying compared with those that don’t spend as much time on social media.

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN TO THE VICTIM OF CYBER BULLYING?

Cyber bullying victim will feel alone and scared when they face cyber bullying, thus it will build up the stress level.  The victim of cyber bullying tend to have low self-esteem and they are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider of committing suicide . 

My thought:

Cyber bullying remind me of the movie “Unfriended” which was release in 2014.

A scene in the movie “Unfriended” (photo credit to Unfriended FB page)

It talks about a revenge of a teenage girl named Laura Barns to her “friends” as they were the one that lead to her suicide.

One of her friend posted her shame video anonymously on the internet, and when Laura beg her to delete the video, she ask her to kill herself. Another one posted hateful message with anonymous account, and even the one that she known since they are young is mocking her in the shame video.

The message of the movie is not about getting a revenge when somebody is hurting you, but it actually emphasis on how serious a cyber-bullying can be and people might tend to suicide when it happen to them. 

Cyber bully might be someone that know the victim, someone that the victim called as ‘friend’ and nobody else will get to notice that the victim is been cyber bullied by someone they care of. Thus, cyber bully might happen around us and we are not able to notice it.

Next time when you are going to post something online, think about the consequence, is it related to other? If yes, will it harm them whether dignity or image? If yes, do you really need to post it out? Don’t become the one that cyber bullied others without noticing it. 

Written By:

Ching Xuan Tong

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)
Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

Way to prevent hackers from hacking FB account

It is believed that Facebook (FB) has become no.1 website among the students on the Web. Every time students will login in to FB by using many devices such as mobile phone, CC’s computer, CITC’s computer and laptop. One thing that students always forget is to log out their FB before they leave which has given a chance for hackers or strangers to hack their account. If account gets accessed by strangers, it’s going to open up a large can of worms, so everyone should take this matter seriously by preventing unwanted access to your account.

As mentioned, the easiest way to prevent strangers to access to your account is by logging out.

Unfortunately, if ones’ forget to log out or device gets stolen, it’s a whole different matter. Now, let’s Invisible Trace campaign go through few important options that you can take to prevent others from accessing your personal Facebook account.

Confirm your mobile number

This is one of many ways to enhance your account security on Facebook. Confirming your mobile number even when you forget or lose your password, Facebook will automatically send you a new password via message (SMS).

 To add your mobile number:

Go to Account Settings > Mobile > Add a Phone > Select your country > set the mobile carrier > Next.

Now you will be given an instruction to send a message (SMS) to the given number.

Get a code via SMS > Enter the code into the column > Next

Your mobile phone is now registered under Facebook, and when the need arises, this connection will be useful to reactivate your Facebook account.

Activate Secure browsing

You can turn on the Secure browsing option to make sure browsing activity within Facebook is safe. By doing this, you automatically limit all external applications that are integrated with Facebook from doing any harm or taking your personal privacy information without your approval or knowledge.

Start securing your account > Click on the top right corner of your FB account > Account Settings

 Select Security from the left menu

At the Secure Browsing section > Edit > ‘check’ Browse Facebook on a secure connection > Save Changes

Disconnect Previous Active Sessions

The good thing about Facebook is that it lets you know about your previous active sessions, where you login from, and what devices you used to access your Facebook account. Here to make sure your account is safe from hack.

Account Settings > Security page > Active Sessions > Edit

Okay. Now all previous sessions will be listed, together with the current active session at the top of the list. Click on the link ‘End Activity’ to kill the activities from other devices.

Don’t click ‘Keep Me Logged In’

While you want to login to Facebook account, at the Log In page, there’s a small check-box

that says Keep me logged in. You have to make sure this box is unchecked. With this, you will be asked for your email address and password every time you go to Facebook.

Remember to log out

Lastly, always remember to log out from your Facebook account after using it.

Conclusion

Applying these 5 options, you can surf your Facebook safely without worrying your FB being hacked. Protect your account and let’s not make your account any easier for hackers to hack. Come and join our Invisible Trace campaign to gain more knowledge in protecting your privacy information from website. Let’s us Seeing the Unseen in this cyber world together. 

Written By: 

Chan Shi Wei 

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)
Tunku Abdul Rahman University College 

4 Core Element of Cyber Crime

Hi all, today we would like to share about the 4 Core Elements of Cyber Crime.

A cyber-crime is committed even without physical contact.

A cyber-criminal can commit crime even without any physical contact with the victims. Anyone, especially children, can become a victim of cyber-crimes. Photos, videos or anything that are uploaded by online users can be edited and transformed into something which is inappropriate, or even offensive. For example, a cyber-criminal could use any material (for eg: your photo) found on the internet (especially social media) to create or edit into a pornography image. Any act involving distribution of such materials is considered as a crime. The scary and important thing to highlight here is that the victims are not even aware that they are being targeted or already a victim.

Anonymous doesn't mean safe.

Most of the online users thought they are safe online because they remain anonymous when they go online, but this is not guaranteed. Most of the time, online users are being bullied, stalked or harassed online. Usually, cyber criminals do not select a particular target to commit crime, therefore, anonymity would not help much in preventing or protecting us to avoid from cyber-crimes. Online users have to take such thing seriously by reporting such cases for people to take actions to stop the crime or the criminals.

Oftentimes, cyber-crimes traverse jurisdictional boundaries.

Even though we are in the era with all kinds of new and high technologies computer systems, it is still challenging for even the most respected of agencies such as FBI or Interpol to keep track and to catch cyber criminals. Anyone, who has a computer and are able to access to the internet can commit crime such as stalking and harassing. Furthermore, cyber criminals not only committing crimes towards local victims, but people from other countries can be their victims too. Therefore, it is very difficult for any related organizations that are able to take action on cyber criminals to actually take proper action on them.

The internet hides criminal or evil intentions.

Any basic online activities such as chatting, messaging, posting, downloading or uploading may lead to atrocious crimes. We do not know the intention of people that we meet online, whether they are good online users or they may harm us anytime. For example, a kidnapper who wants to kidnap a child will act as a friend of you, to keep track of your daily activities until they get a best chance to commit crime on your child. Criminals can easily commit crimes while during basic online activities to get what they want

Written By:

Chen Tze Yang

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)

Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

What is Cyber-crime?

Hi everyone,

Today we are going to discuss about cyber-crimes. Cyber-crime can be defined as any illegal activity that uses a computer as its primary means of function. The term ‘cyber-crime’ can refer to offenses which are including criminal activity against data, infringement of content and copyright, fraud, unauthorized access, child pornography and cyber-stalking.

Criminal activity against data

• Criminal activity against data means that there are people stealing the data from others, example, stealing the private and confidential information from the company.

Infringement of content and copyright

• Infringement of content and copyright means ‘copying without following the law of copyright’. Example, copy an article without references

Fraud

• Fraud means the scam in the internet and networking. Example, posting fake photos or fake statements online in order to make benefits.

Unauthorized access

• Unauthorized access means access without permission from the related person. An example, access to others personal account without permission, such as Facebook, online banking account and others.

Cyber-stalking.

• Cyber-stalking means paying close attention to a specific person by using computer and internet. For an example, keep searching a specific person’s personal data could be considered as cyber-stalking.

These are the type of cyber-crime that had been widely used by people nowadays. Therefore, we should concern about the cyber- safety. Please do join our cyber safety campaign and know more about cyber safety and learn to protect yourself in cyber world.

Written By:

Chan Lok Yong

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)

Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

10 tips to stop hacker ruining your life

Can you imagine how awful when your Facebook, Blog, Email or bank account get hacked? Once they are being hacked by hackers, your life can be ruined like forever? Can you imagine that?

Once all the social media accounts get hacked, you will encounter bad consequences such as your money got stolen, personal details hijacked and so on.

Therefore, we are here to provide you the tips to avoid being hacked and you can stay safety in the cyber world.

• Use different password

Every single account of your social media should have a different password. Never ever have the same password for an insecure site like Facebook and something that is important like your online banking account as it is very easy for hacker to track the password and hack into the account.

• Use complex passwords

A strong password should be a mixture of upper and lower case letter, numbers and symbols. If your password does not contains all these elements, I’m so sorry to say that your password can be easily hacked!! Remember!!! Never ever use name, birthday or information about someone or something around you.

• Complex usernames

I bet 95% of you have your email address or name as your username right? Reason? “Because it is easy for me to remember” Gotcha!!! Tell you what you should make your username as complex as your passwords. Many Word Press, blogs are set up with the default username of “admin”, so hackers are already 50% of the way there to hack into your account and ruin your life!!!! So, you really have to change your username into something really complex and unrelated.

• Updated anti-virus and anti-malware software

You need to have at least one or two updated of the latest version anti-virus and anti-malware programs. There are free ones like AVG or the paid ones like Norton. There is another recommended software is Malwarebytes which helps to scan things that anti-virus programs might have missed. Remember get one for your laptop or desktop and update it automatically for safety.

• Latest Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari version

Don’t just ignore the update request from your browser. Do it right away! Some of those updates are for security reasons. In fact, keep up-to-date as to which is the most secure browser and just use that.

• Use Facebook and Email securely with the right URL

Go log in to Facebook. Go on, do it now!!! Now, does the URL say “http://” or “https://”?

If it is the first one, ooppsss!!! You are not in a secure session. But, don’t worry. We are here to help remember? Ok! Now, go in to your settings and make sure it always uses https:// and whenever you log into and website, please make sure, 100% sure you type the “s” if you are logging in.

• Don’t use public free Wi-Fi

What?!!!! Are you kidding me? Nope! This is no joke! You know when you go to a café and log on to the free network? Well, take a look at how easy it is for people to steal your social network passwords using just a simple Firefox plugin. I know it’s really sad that this type of stuff exists, but they do exist. So try your best not to use them!

• Make your security questions tough

You know, those kind of security question like “what is your mother’s maiden name?” Well, make the answer complex. If you ever get hacked, you need this information to re-gain access to the account. Im sure you don’t want a hacker to change this. Please imagine how ruined your life can be if the hacker has figured out the password and gained access into your account?

• Monitor your logged on location

How to monitor? Go down to your Gmail account, you will see a little line of text that says “Last account activity”. This will show you where your account has been last accessed from. So, if you suspect something that is not right you should be alert and keep an eye on this and do remember record down the unfamiliar IP address.

• Don’t click links in Emails

As a general rule, most banks and financial institutions don’t send you Email with links. Don’t ever click any such Email links if you get it. If you are genuinely think it is from your bank, just give them a call for confirmation.


Source: http://www.blogtyrant.com/facebook-email-security-hackers/

Written By:

Chan Hui Xin

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)

Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

Top 10 hackers in the world

ATTENTION, EVERYONE.

If you are a common internet user, you should be aware when you surf internet. There are many traps set by hackers without you notice about it.  

Hacker- might be an individual or a group of people who throw a malicious software or virus at a system to gain the access to the desired information. If a hacker wants to hack in to your system, he or she can do it easily. Following is the list of top 10 hackers that you should know:

Gary Mckinnon

He is a Scottish, United Kingdom hacker. He hacked into 97 United State Military and NASA between 2001 and 2002 and claimed to have been looking for evidence of UFOs and “free energy”, a mythical, inexhaustible source of power, on the military computers.  He stolen a photograph of a UFO, a list of ‘non-terrestrial officers’ and evidence of a ‘free energy’ cover-up. He also shut down 2,000 computer for 24 hours and posted a notice on military website: Your security is crap.

LulzSec

Is a Black Hat hacker group and there are about 11 members. They hacked into Sony Picture (2011), CIA, FBI, Scotland Yard, and several noteworthy accounts. They hacked in Fox.com and discovered a weakness in the site, and used that to leak the profiles and names of 73,000 X Factor US contestants. And, they also attacked Sony's PlayStation Network, stealing 24.6 million customers' private data, and leading the company to take the network offline for days.

Adrian Lamo

He is a former hacker. He became a news when he hacked into Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and The New York Times.

Matthew Bevan and Richard Pryce

Bevan is a British and arrested in 1996 for hacking into Secure US Government network. He partner with Pryce to hack into US military computers and used it as a means to infiltrate the foreign systems and triggered great many issues between USA and North Korea.

  Jonathan James

James was an American hacker who was the first juvenile to be imprisoned for a cyber-crime at the age of 16. He hacked into Defense Threat Reduction Agency of US department. Further, he installed a sniffer that scrutinized the messages passed on between the DTRA employees. He died in 2008.

 Kevin Poulsen

He is an American former black hat hacker and currently is a digital security journalist. Poulsen infiltrated a radio shows call-in contest so that he could win a Porsche.

 Kevin Mitnick

Mitnick is an American computer security consultant, author and hacker. He pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud that included wire fraud, computer fraud and of illegally interception a wire communication. After five years of incarceration that included eight months of solitary confinement, Mitnick now has started afresh.

Anonymous

Anonymous is a group of hackers that originated in 2003. Identified in public by wearing a Guy Fawkes Masks, Anons, as they are widely known, have publicized themselves by attacking the government, religious and corporate websites. The Vatican, the FBI, the CIA, PayPal, Sony, MasterCard, Visa, Chinese, Israeli, Tunisian, and Ugandan governments have been among their targets.

                                                                                                                                                                 

Astra

A 58-year-old Greek mathematician hacked into the computer systems of France's Dassault Group over a period of five years, stealing weapons technology data and 3D modeling software that he then sold to at least 250 people in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and the Middle East.

Albert Gonzalez

Gonzalez was accused of credit card theft and the selling of more than 170 million credit card and ATM numbers. He also oversaw a website called Shadowcrew, a forum that allowed members to buy stolen credit card numbers.

Source:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/siddhi-palande/2014/06/10-best-hackers-the-world-has-ever-known/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/02/the-most-dangerous-hackers-and-groups/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathew_Bevan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)

https://stratobackup.com/anonymousa-new-face-for-activism/

Written By:

Cha Sook Yong

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)

Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

5 Reasons Why Hacking Is Easy

Hackers were once known as people who are intelligently curious, a tireless explorer of computer systems. But when more and more hackers misuse their talents for their own personal gain, the term “hacker” took on a new meaning - as one who breaks into systems with evil purposes. Thus, below are the reasons why hacking is easy for hackers.

1. Dead Easy-To-Guess Password

• “123456”: There’s no excuse for this: plain laziness can cause one’s website or account to be hacked.

• “iloveyou”: Yes, so does the hacker that did this to you.

• “blahblah”: If you can’t be bothered to create a strong password, then blah to you too.

2. Easy Availability of Password-Guessing Software

Password Guessing Software and various Hacking tools can be easily found in the internet. All these software have the capability to run up to an astounding 8 million guesses per second. There is no way to take these software off the market, so the only thing a user could do is to change passwords often and enforce best practices when setting hard-to-guess passwords.

3. Vulnerability to Social Engineering

Social engineering is considered the art of manipulating people or computers, and this is usually employed by crooked hackers to gain access to what’s not rightfully theirs.

Here’s a good example we particularly like: recently in August, comedian Erik Stolhanske’s Twitter account was hacked by a cyber-security expert using merely his name. Earlier, the two individuals came to an agreement for the expert to try hacking his Twitter account, and Stolhanske was surprised that this was swiftly and easily achieved.

4. Bad Encryption System

Recently, Adobe’s systems were compromised as a massive 150 million Adobe user accounts were compromised, allowing hackers to cart away users’ email address, password, credit card details and other vital information. While there were some users who used easily-guessable common passwords, this constitutes only 3% of the entire 150 million accounts stolen. The rest of the blame may be placed on Adobe’s decision to choose symmetric key encryption over hashing, but they are opting to stay mum by not revealing if it’s bad encryption practice on their part.

5. Humans are Inherently Curious, Gullible, and Greedy

People may argue that hackers are getting more skillful in leveraging on hi-tech wizardry to hack into websites, but let’s take a look at the mirror and see how we may be responsible for our own downfall. Failure to update your WordPress software will lead to exposing your site’s vulnerability to hackers everywhere. That, ladies and gentlemen, is apathy. Malicious malware usually depended on curious users to click on a link or attachment, and most of the time, they are successfully in manipulating people this way.

We could go on and on about human weaknesses but if you are determined not to be “hacked”, you can practice the following due diligence:

• Assume nothing

• Believe no one

• Check everything

Written By:

Brandon Choo Jern Han

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)

Tunku Abdul Rahman University College

Welcome to Cyber Safety Team !

Internet plays an important role in our daily lives. With the rise of technology nowadays, we can access to internet at anytime and anywhere. Indeed, internet can serve as a good friend of us especially in providing us vital source and information. Internet has created a space where we are gathered together as one without geographical and time constrained. 

However, most of the time we only aware of the good things in cyberspace while downplaying the bad sides of it. With this problem that often occurs among cyber users, it provides an opportunity for cyber-crime activities. You think you are safe online? Think again.

We, as the Cyber Safety Team, will provide various information regarding to cyber safety tips through this blog. In accordance to our campaign name ‘Invisible Trace’, where we will reveal all the invisible threats and dangers in cyberspace every week. Topics that will be covered such as: 

Ø  Hacker

Ø  Cyber Crime

Ø  Online Stalking

Ø  Social Media

Ø  Cyber Bullying

Ø  Anti-Virus

Ø  Wi-Fi

Ø  Cyber Attack

Ø  Cyber Safe

Ø  Online Purchase

Ø  Password

Read our blog to keep you up-to-date with our campaign progress as well as gaining more knowledge about cyber safety. Stay tune with us and have a nice day!




Written By: 
ONG MEE HUNG 
Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)
Tunku Abdul Rahman University College