Arkansans may be at a lower risk for cybercrime. Telecommunication experts from an Indian company called NetworkBuildz have compiled data from the FBI's Internet Crime Report over the past five years to determine which states experienced the fewest attacks. They found that there have been just under 14,000 reported attacks in Arkansas. That puts the state as the fifth lowest in the country.
However, there was still a combined victim loss of over $100 million. Despite the Natural State’s low ranking, Arkansans should still be cautious and protect themselves from cybercriminals. Dale Thompson is the Associate Department Head for Academics for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Arkansas. He said one reason cyber crime may be down is education.
“It's become more common knowledge, there's been a big push on educating employees to be careful on click links and things like that. So a lot of the companies are taking cybersecurity a lot more seriously. And they're just building it into their processes that that's just part of the business model, that you have to deal with cybersecurity, they train their employees not to click on lengths, they train their employees not to, you know, provide any kind of information unless they are truly talking to the right person, when somebody just randomly calls on the phone. They also are getting better at you know, installing them out the anti virus and things like that on their, on their computers. Also doing, you know, filtering things, some of the emails that have some malicious emails, with links on it, you can subscribe to services to it.”
Thompson said it’s best to exercise caution even while searching for guidance.
"There's a lot of training sites out there. The only problem is you got to pick the ones that are actually not, not actually malware in disguise, but actually people have set up sites like that, you know, it's pretty been pretty sad. Yeah, I guess. You know, there are, I think there are training sessions now, sometimes, in some community groups about, you know, what, if it sounds too good to be true, it is true, right? You know, right, that should be your red flag. And, you know, there's all the red flags of, if they're trying to make you hurry up and make a decision."
Thompson advises people to never click on links about finances that are sent to them, especially if they are unexpected. He suggests that you should just go directly to the bank, credit card company, or other organization if you think there is an issue.
"I call the call the, you know, the phone number on the back of my credit card, where I log in directly to my account. I mean, I hate to be that pessimistic, but it's, you know, it's almost to that point now, to see if anything, if it is real or not, be careful on the links that you click, of course, that's the big thing. It's really sad, because I think, you know, the generation including me, that I grew up in is, you know, that we were trusting that people weren't going to be doing dishonest things all the time. I mean, sometimes, but it seems like with the opening up of this digital media, we get bombarded with a lot of people who are trying to do us harm and steal from us and things like that."
If you have a question or complaint about cybercrime, visit the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center to learn more or report attacks.
