October 26, 2016
Battling cybercrime 3
Around Town Collector receives award
Moore on life
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Run for the hills
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Local experts tout the importance of vigilance during National Cyber Security Awareness Month
Discovery Days celebrated
By Brett Auten Today’s crooks, thieves, and con men come in all forms and shapes, and can strike from all corners of the globe. We have all seen the emails by now. By the thousands, over the course of the year they come across with warnings of our vital accounts beings closed, or mounds of Scrooge-McDuck-riches awaiting us. There are the sob stories of people in desperate circumstances who just need a charitable soul to help them with a money transfer. Tricking people to fork over pertinent financial information is one of the many ways criminals scam people online. October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month and most of us believe we have a leg up on these scams and could sniff one out from a mile away, but it’s not necessarily that easy. Across the world, cybercrime is booming and millions are victimized by online scams, whether it’s blocking access to a website, stealing medical or credit card information, or attempting to extort money by remotely holding the contents of a personal computer hostage, it is happening on an hourly basis. In St. Charles County, Val Joyner, Public Affairs Officer with the St. Charles
County Police Department, said that credit card fraud is the most common cybercrime reported in the area. According to Joyner, the St. Charles County Cybercrime team advises citizens that if your credit card or identity is used to compromise your bank account, the first thing you do as a victim is notify your banking institution. Second, you should notify the law enforcement agency in the jurisdiction in which you live and let them know of the crime committed against you. Bring any documentation of loss and banking records when you file your report. The information gathered from the report will be used to determine crime trends, and the prosecution will be determined based on the outcome of the investigation. The term cybercrime is a broad umbrella and can be perpetrated from computer experts looking to outdo each other, to businesses trying to gain an advantage by hacking a competitor’s website, or criminal rings looking to snag your personal information and then sell it on black markets. St. Charles’ Barry Herring, with CMIT Solutions, has seen them all. “Every day it changes,” said Herring,
who has over 20-years’ experience in the field. “Cybercrimes have been around from the start.” The current hot-button trend in cybercrime is ransomware. Local governments, school districts, hospitals businesses small and large have felt the impact of ransomware, a type of virus that encrypts, or locks ups
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