Smartphone owners have to piracy risk

Kuala Lumpur: The owner of a smart phone like Geolocation system update them through social sites, exposing themselves to the risk of property crime and corporate crime.

Director of Commercial Crimes Investigation Department in Bukit Aman, Datuk Syed Ismail Syed Azizan said the use of applications that have access to the 'Geolocation' where users inform their positions and activities, suspected open space to the crime of burglary and robbery.

Many avid social sites like updates or check in their location or activity through applications such as Foursquare, Facebook to tell what they are doing and where hotspots are visited on the basis of just the fun of it.

However, this can actually be a motivating factor to the risk of becoming a victim of crime after criminals acquire their target information through cyberspace, he said.

Syed Ismail said, there are also some social networking site that updates the current status saying that they would leave their homes for a few days and the action is to invite risk to the safety of their homes.

He said what is alarming is the possibility of social sites they infiltrated and information used criminals.

Syed Ismail said the action to update the current position or activities invite the risk of the occurrence of corporate crime against individuals who hold great status or position in the organization.

There is the rival competitors trying to find information and willing to do anything just for the purpose, he added.

Corporate crime in the business world was likely to do so in the interests of criminals stealing business as business data in an effort to sabotage the competitors, he said.

Syed Ismail said, although so far no information or complaints about crime, such as burglary or robbery caused the action to update status or position, but safety and risk should be known to the user.

He advised consumers to use this application and understand its function.

He said a total of 24 cases of hacking activity resulted in a loss of about RM3.3 million reported in the period January to September this year.

Previously, Head of Business Development CyberSecurity Malaysia, Mohd Yusoff Mohamed Anwer, said the loss of RM2.75 billion in the next five years due to cyber crime, especially in the financial sector.

BERNAMA