The Police warn of the increase in cybercrime: "It is already easier to suffer an online fraud than a robbery"

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"Fraud is right now the biggest problem on the Internet. It is ruining thousands and thousands of people in Spain every year."

, chief commissioner of the Central Cybercrime Unit of the National Police, warns this directly.

And he does so because dozens of cases pass through his table every day, to which hundreds more could be added every day if everyone denounced.

But many times the shame itself prevents it: "You have to be careful with the data that are given online and the purchases that are made with the card, we will not tire of repeating it. And you have to report it, because if not, the crime remains unpunished".

We go in parts.

What exactly is the commissioner referring to when he talks about cyber fraud?

"To all kinds of scams and scams online: purchases that never arrive, cloned web pages of other well-known ones, whether they are tickets for theaters, cinemas or concerts, bank websites, computer products, that steal your personal data, they clone your phone card and credit card, trips that are paid for and don't arrive, ghost rentals. "

In other words, fraud has been established on the Internet as the main cybercrime.

So much so, that Pacheco affirms that "right now, fraud already accounts for between 85% and 90% of known cybercrimes."

The figure is worrying not only because of its quantity, but because it continues to rise.

In 2018 it was 80%.

At this point, we must forget about

to spy on large corporations or governments, put aside the stories already past - although they still seem to be from the future -, such as that of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, and consider that the victims today they are ordinary citizens.

They are those who buy everyday objects to be sent home, those who do not update their antivirus, those who rent an apartment for the holidays, search for their plane tickets on the Internet or carry out operations in

banking

.

In other words, yourself.

Or their children.

And your neighbors.

All the world.

"A citizen today is more likely to be a victim of an internet fraud than to suffer a robbery or a robbery at his home," says the commissioner.

Criminal recycling

Every day, cybercrime investigators see how longtime criminals are disappearing, because those who were already destined for crime almost before they were born have realized that it is not the same to steal a bag in one go than to rip off some. tens or hundreds of euros online.

It is not the same to rob a pharmacy than to offer on the web a rental apartment for the summer holidays that is not even yours.

It is not the same for various reasons.

There is no risk of committing a crime in the physical world.

There are no alarms, there are no patrol cars, there are no victims to confront the offender.

And the main advantage is that there is not the same sentence for doing one thing as for the other.

As long as that does not change, there is a recycling of common criminals into petty

and cyber scammers.

Today it is no longer difficult to learn a

basic

or get a

simple

to do the job.

Therefore, many young people, according to experts, are turning to cybercrime.

Within this type of fraud there is sometimes one even more malicious in which the victims multiply, but which is also gaining strength.

These are scams related to

mercenary

, such as the investigation closed this summer by cybercrime agents.

A 'modus operandi'

On this occasion, after a long work, a network of

made up of five groups, mainly based in the Canary Islands and Catalonia, whose members followed the same pattern: they offered their services on social networks and well-known advertising websites, and for a

few hundred euros promised services like installing a

spy email accounts or phone.

That offer had a clear market, and with a real barrage of ads (about 12,000, the agents have counted) they were capturing rogues.

Other

groups

advertised themselves to offer tasks such as entering an institutional website to erase fines from a driver, when not as a "

for everything."

On the police side, a new task is becoming more and more important: cyber patrol.

Tracking tools are used that permanently search the network for the crime and through there many new cases arrive.

Without going any further, this latest

investigation

.

Behind these thousands of advertisements found in cyber

,

there were actually

, that is, the

variant

of lifelong extortion, according to the investigation of the Open Networks section of the Police.

Spying on people

In Black Mirror plan, in cases of espionage on couples, the allegedly spied person received a notice from the

himself

, who took money from him saying that he had his photos, his entire private life, and that he would air it if he did not pay.

Many times it was not even true that he had that information with which he was threatening, but only his telephone number because it had been given to him by the person who hired him.

But later, the

also took money

from the one who requested his services by

threatening to expose the victim.

In this way, the benefit finally obtained was double.

At other times, the scam was more classic:

asked for money in advance and did not show signs of life again.

To fight against cyber fraud, the commissioner Pedro Pacheco is clear that the first measure is the prevention that you can do yourself: "Use prepaid cards, do not leave the data on any website, put complicated passwords and change them regularly, do not put your entire life of one in the networks, never to put the data of a credit card in porn pages, to have a good antivirus, not to click suspicious links, either in the mail or in message applications ".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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