Cybersecurity: Improving Digital Literacy Together

Bank payment cards, mobile phones, computers, programs and services - all this makes our life more comfortable, but unprotected from fraudsters. Day after day, new types of fraud appear in this area, which means that users of the World Wide Web need certain skills and knowledge to prevent themselves from being deceived.

Cyber fraudsters deceive customers when selling various goods and services, create fake online stores, and steal personal data.

Since 2019, the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus on the basis of the Departments of Legal Informatics and Detective Activity provides training for police officers in the line of duty "Countering cybercrime and computer intelligence". Third-year police cadets can choose this training direction. Training is carried out in the interests of anti-cybercrime units, as well as drug control and anti-trafficking units. During the training, the cadets who have chosen the specified direction of training undergo professional and educational training and pre-graduate practice on the basis of the units for combating cybercrime, drug trafficking and combating human trafficking.

Fraud is widespread on social media and on free sites for private sales ads.

There are cases of creating fake websites of banking institutions of the Republic of Belarus and payment systems that steal money from the accounts of payment cards of citizens. The attackers offer to enter confidential information: the card number, expiration date, name of the owner, as well as the PIN and CVV code indicated on the back of the card. They also try to get hold of the identification number of the citizen's passport and the session password. The information obtained opens up the possibility of obtaining access to the "Internet Banking" system of the interbank identification system.

The commission of remote thefts in most cases is carried out by cybercriminals on the condition of complete anonymity of the data. Special programs allow them to hide their identity and location, and mobile phone numbers and bankcards are prudently registered to other people.
Scammers send links to "phishing" (fake) social networking sites, where users manually enter their "username" and password, or transmit their "cookies" (a unique code stored in the browser, transmitted to the user upon successful authorization on the site).

To succumb to the temptation and click on the link, citizens are encouraged by various tempting offers: receiving a free prize, participating in the drawing of an expensive device or voting.

Under the plausible pretext of providing assistance in obtaining loans, citizens transmit data for access to the "Internet Banking" system, photos with the image of passport pages, SMS messages received on their mobile phone. At the same time, they do not even realize the consequences of such actions and allow cybercriminals to commit theft.

Don't be fooled! Be vigilant! Constantly improve your digital literacy.

Since 2019, the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus on the basis of the Departments of Legal Informatics and Detective Activity provides training for police officers in the line of duty "Countering cybercrime and computer intelligence". Third-year police cadets can choose this training direction. Training is carried out in the interests of anti-cybercrime units, as well as drug control and anti-trafficking units. During the training, the cadets who have chosen the specified direction of training undergo professional and educational training and pre-graduate practice on the basis of the units for combating cybercrime, drug trafficking and combating human trafficking.