With the ease of access to the Internet, users have developed a sense of complacency or even a mild form of naivety in their daily digital lives, potentially lending themselves to becoming victims of cybercrime.
Kaspersky Lab has launched a campaign in Asia Pacific to educate the public and spread awareness on Internet safety. Known as the Goondus Awards, the campaign is inviting submissions from the public on Internet mistakes and faux pas that have led to reputational, financial or property damage or loss for individuals.
The Goondus Awards website which features the submissions anonymously, highlights real life incidents where a naïve or ill-informed Internet practice led to some form of misfortune.
“We want to educate people about safer Internet behaviours and to showcase real world examples of missteps leading to some form of loss or damage. While some stories may be humorous and even incredulous, the repercussions and damage were real and in some cases severe,” explained Altaf Halde, Managing Director, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab. “As our entries are entirely anonymous, we’re encouraging a community led campaign to drive home the message that only safe practices will make the Internet safer for users.”
The Goondus Awards showcases a wide array of stories ranging from humorous occurrences to unintelligent acts and sad episodes involving monetary or reputational loss. The campaign acts as an initiative to raise cyber security awareness in an engaging form through the sharing of personal stories. It also serves to help web visitors foster positive and pleasant online experiences.
The Goondus Awards aim to remind users that they are not completely safe from cybercriminals and that they need to be vigilant, practice and maintain Internet etiquette to protect themselves.
One classic example of a story that may happen to anyone is one of two friends using iTune top up cards who was duped through an ingenious identity theft scam. Only when one of the friends was out of pocket by $200 did she find out that her friend had never asked for a top up!
The fact that identity theft can happen so close to home and lead to financial loss was very disturbing and shocking to the individuals in this example.
Submission and contest details
The criteria for the story entries are that they must be based on actual events leading to tangible or intangible losses concerning Internet use. The winning stories will be selected by a panel of judges where participants stand a chance of winning an iPad Mini or a Tablet and even monthly prizes like a Kaspersky Lab premiums hamper. The website also includes tips and advice from cyber security experts and elaborations on the different types of scams such as Internet love sex scams, credit for sex scams and phishing scams, to further inform users.
According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), 27,482 cases of cybercrime were reported from January to June.
India has seen a total of 1.71 lakh cybercrimes in the past three-and-a-half years and the number of crimes so far this year (27,482) indicate that the total number is likely to cross 50,000 by December, just as in 2016*.
