Today, owing to technological advancements and digitization, we navigate two worlds every day—the offline and the online world. Security is a crucial aspect of both these arenas to ensure a safe and hassle-free existence. Cybersecurity is a widely discussed subject today owing to the rampant fraudulent activities occurring online, resulting in threats to one’s personal information and threatening safety. Here’s an insight into cyber extortion and the best practices to report such malpractices:

What is cyber extortion?
Cyber extortion refers to online criminal activity involving demand for personal, sensitive information using severe threats or coercion. The personal data demanded could include money, confidential details, or both.

Types of cyber extortion
Coercion: Coercion involves deception to achieve the end goal of procuring confidential information from the victim. Typically, hackers pose as harmless individuals, such as friends, love interests, or even online retailers, and try to persuade the targets to carry out the desired action. Phishing emails are prime examples of coercive behavior online.

Ranson demands: Another common cyber-extortion strategy involves asking for ransom and threatening the victim with negative consequences in case of failure to provide the ransom. The targets here could be individuals as well as companies or businesses.

Threats: Extortionists may also threaten the victim with dire consequences upon failure to provide the desired information. For example, they may threaten to leak personal or morphed photographs online or malign the individual or company’s reputation.

Distributed denial of service: Distributed denial of service (DDoS) is a technique in which hackers may use bots to generate excessive artificial traffic on the victim’s website, blocking genuine traffic from visiting the site. DDoS also involves demanding a ransom or personal data as a condition for retracting artificial traffic from the victim’s website.

Reporting cyber extortion
Report on the respective platform: An effective redress technique for cyber-extortion victims is to report the issue on the platform on which the crime was committed. For instance, if the perpetrator is using Instagram or Facebook to extort information, one can report the profile on the platform and share information on the nature of the crime.

Approach a law-enforcement authority: Taking the legal route might be necessary to ensure safety during cyber-extortion cases. Law-enforcement bodies typically employ professionals to help people deal with cybercrime and extortion. Such authorities may be able to offer sound advice on the next steps.

Contact Internet Crime Complaint Center: The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that deals with resolving online crimes. One can report cybercrimes on IC3’s official website; however, in emergencies, it is best to call 911 for immediate safety.

According to reports, almost 90% of the country’s critical infrastructure sectors became victims of at least one successful cyber attack in 2021. Such staggering statistical figures imply an urgent need to address this issue. Besides taking immediate action to report cyber extortion, taking preventive measures like installing antivirus software, not disclosing confidential information online, and being cautious of strangers on online platforms can help one avoid such attacks. Businesses must create data backups, conduct regular training on preventing cybercrime and cyber extortion reporting, and conduct thorough background checks of employees before and during onboarding. Above all, prevention is always better than cure; individuals and organizations must exercise efforts to avoid falling prey to such fraudulent online activities.