Elderly people targeted by cybercriminals

The elderly and the youth are the most vulnerable to cybercrimes, Dr Duane Aslett from North-West University, a forensic accountancy expert, warned.

Aslett said cybercrime had increased due to the move to an online environment, especially during Covid. “During Covid, people who had never been on the internet in terms of banking and online shopping were forced to go online which created an opportunity for criminals to exploit them.

“Cybercrime was an issue in the past. Covid created ways for criminals to be more innovative. Statistics show a steady increase since Covid,” he said.

Aslett said cybercrime scams included phishing (e-mails designed to deceive), vishing (voiceover messages on a phone), spear phishing (aimed at a person with e-mails from someone known to them) and redirecting from a legitimate site to a clone site to get information.

Goal

He said the goal was to get information needed to hack or access a person’s accounts. “It’s taken a long time for SA to get up to speed with cybercrime.

The Cybercrime Act was promulgated on 1 December, 2021 and overviewed unlawful access hacking, unlawful interception of data, unlawful interference, cyberfraud, cyberprudery, cyberextortion and malicious communication that included the spread of intimate photos, including revenge porn and child pornography,” he explained.

Aslett said the country made progress with the set-up of a computer security response hub to report cybercrime. “Vulnerable groups were being targeted.

People are not aware of how much this happens. It’s more prevalent than we think. Elderly widows, widowers start a romantic relationship via social media and once it’s established they start asking for money in various ways,” he said.

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Vigilance

Aslett said victims lost a lot or all their money and were embarrassed to admit to being scammed. The other vulnerable group was children, especially teenagers, who were vulnerable to grooming.

“You find someone pretending to be the same age, which could be a sexual predator on the other side. Grooming involves building a relationship with the child, getting them to switch on the camera and exposing themselves.

Those and videos get sold onto the dark web,” he said. Aslett said the problem among the youth was the competition for friends and likes on social media.

“Vigilance in terms of accepting friend requests is not always there,” he said. Criminologist at the University of Limpopo prof Jaco Barkhuizen said cybercrime was on the rise because the police did not have much capacity to deal with it.

“The Cybercrime Act is already vulnerable to the development of technology, like deep fakes and social media fishing. The Act is already outdated.

We need more trained experts, better software and policing tools.”

READ MORE: SA under siege: Gov calls for global help to combat cybercrime

– marizkac@citizen.co.za