Mr Pius Gaskiya, Founder of Ertrends Hub, has called on government and private organisations to redouble efforts in creating more awareness on the danger and solution to cybercrime in Nigeria.
Gaskiya made the call during an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.
Ertrends Hub, an Abuja-based scientific hub, is a specialised hub for building and training on software development.
He said private and public bodies had the responsibility of bringing the attention of the public, especially at grassroots, on how cyber-crimes was being conducted and suggest ways of curbing the menace.
” It will interest you to know that cybercriminals target people at the grassroots more because they are more vulnerable to cybercrime and accessible by cybercriminals.
” More awareness needs to be created and targeted toward those in the villages and communities too.
” Meetings, jingles, community gatherings among others can be used to create more awareness on the latest modus operandi of cyber-criminals to mitigate the spread of cybercrime. ” he said.
The expert, however, called on people to exercise extra caution when using the internet.
” People need to be extra cautious of scam mails, scam calls, scam links among others when using the internet for anything such as browsing, calling, social media.”
He said it was imperative to ensure that people were well aware of habits that made them more susceptible to being attacked and shun them.
”The increasing reliance of people on mobile phones and other Information Communication Technology(ICT) devices could easily make them fall prey to cybercriminals.”
Gaskiya identified writing and spreading of fake news as some of the methods criminals used in perpetrating cyber-crime in society.
” As agents of change, the media and those concerned should also avoid being used as a channel for propagating fake news as it is another way of propagating cybercrime.