The Price of Convenience – Cybercrime Up 23%
Cybercrime in Australia 2022
If we had a physical crime rate that went up 23% annually there would be a mass outcry. Call it “cyber”-crime and it is simply put down to the price of living in this online world. The total heist from Australian citizens for 2022, was over 3 Billion dollars.
If you think this is an exaggeration, these figures were taken from the Australian Government Report on cybercrime and refer only to money, reported as stolen from individuals in 2022. Given that elderly people are most vulnerable, it is quite likely that the figure is significantly more that.
Our Wealthy Governments and Corporations Have No Solutions
When I read the above-mentioned report, I was more surprised about the naive section titled “What should individuals do?” The advice in that section is just that same as solving a problem like drug/alcohol abuse, by saying that all you have to do is “stop taking drugs/alcohol”
If you take a look at the other articles I have published on cybercrime, you should have a better understanding that this problem cannot be solved by government, or by throwing money at it. (Remember Google can only manage to filter out 50% of all the world’s malware already and they have lots of money to tackle the problem).
Convenience Has A Price
Cybercrime flourishes in a world where convenience is the primary driver for human behaviour. The easier it is for you to do something online, the easier it is for somebody else to work out how to exploit your desire for that convenience.
The more of your personal information you have stored on online systems, the greater the reward for cybercriminals.
The more that big systems become connected and share data, the greater the reward for cybercriminals.
We are building giant gold mines for these multi-billion dollar criminal businesses, worldwide!
Withdrawal Requires Self-Discipline but is Not Impossible
Common sense would suggest that the root cause of the problem could be addressed in a totally different way. With a bit of self-discipline and a bit more effort, we could reduce the rate of cybercrime, rather than let it skyrocket, as it is doing now.
Financial Transactions
Use cash, where possible. If the transactions need to be done online, then only use “wired” network devices, such as a PC running Linux, directly connected to your house’s modem/router. If you absolutely feel that you need to use a credit card, disable the “touch and go” function. Never use your smartphone to store bank information. This is a large topic that I will soon address in another article.
The tips above only reduce the risk of criminal attacks. However, I would rather have a wallet of cash stolen, than thousands of dollars taken from my bank account without my knowledge or consent.
Health Transactions
They should only ever be stored and made accessible to your treating doctor. No online system is “required” for this to work. The collection of your private health data, any government agency, needs to be stopped immediately.
Property Transactions
Ultimately, they need to take physical form, like an official land title, which can be stored in a place of your discretion. The introduction of digital land titles will take any physical proof of ownership away from you, forever. Digital land titles are coming to state near you in Australia!
Purchasing Transactions
There are only two reasons that these are required. Firstly, to ensure that you can prove that the item was purchased from the retailer and secondly, to “show” your taxation authority that you actually purchased that item. In both cases, the responsibility of storage and retrieval should remain in your hands. It is nobody else’s business. The introduction of digital currencies will change this forever. This needs to be stopped, before it even starts.
Interconnecting Transactions by Digital ID
The attempt to capture all of your personal details and store them in a single digital entity, the Digital ID, is simply the worst thing that could happen to any community. While it may sound exceptionally convenient, it is also the single thing that will lead to some of the biggest crimes that we will ever experience, either by cybercriminals, or even by your own government. This must never be allowed to happen.
Action is Required Urgently to Define A New Path For The Future
You would be forgiven for thinking that none of the above-mentioned solutions are in your hands, but I beg to differ.
Remember that your government is supposed to be a “public service”, so it is up to you to make sure they are serving your appropriately. Think carefully, before accepting “systems” that make the “gold mine” for cybercriminals bigger and more attractive, as you will end being a statistic eventually. There is already one citizen attacked, every 6 seconds, on average in Australia!
To most people, cybercriminals do not have a face, or any physical presence. Committing cybercrimes does not require any face-to-face confrontation and is simply a gutless crime. Our response to this type of crime should be no different to what would happen if somebody had stolen 3 Billion of country’s citizens physical currency in one year.
In Australia, our government has not helped to-date and is only going to make the problem worse with the introduction of even more, interconnected systems of data collection.
It is your responsibility to speak up and define the future.
Centralised digital systems have no country bounds, so it is critical that all citizens, in all countries, work together to stop them in all countries today.