Do you ever wonder if what you're doing online
isn't as private as you like to think?
Er... Online shopping, are we? Nice dress.
Um, thanks.
Wait, who are you?
I'm just going to grab your credit card details.
Oh.
Um, OK.
The reality is the digital world
provides a lot of opportunities for crafty criminals.
Stats show cybercrime costs our economy up to $1 billion a year
and experts say the problem is getting worse.
MAN: What I'm seeing is a significant uptake in the threat...
..as Australians, as a society, become more and more dependent
on information and on electronic devices
for our everyday day-to-day lives.
Cybercrime can be carried out in many different ways
and for many different reasons.
Often it's about making money.
That can be done by sneakily installing software
that gives someone access to your device
or tricking you into giving out your personal information.
Oh, was that a capital 'T' in your password?
Um, no, it is a small 't'.
Right.
Thanks.
No worries.
Sometimes criminals are out to cause chaos
and shut down websites, spread nasty content or viruses.
That might be to prove a point or just for LOLs.
Why is this website not working?
That was me.
I did that.
I crashed it.
That was me.
Great.
That was me.
But sometimes cybercriminals are actual spies
or people employed by governments or organisations.
They could be trying to collect information,
cause problems for rivals or even influence elections.
So, who are you going to vote for?
What? Who are you?
I'd tell you but I would have to kill you.
You've probably heard that Russia has been accused
of using cybercrime to try to interfere with US politics.
But it's not the only government
suspected of hacking other countries' networks.
Recently, Australia's Parliament
and several political parties were hacked
and experts say it was probably
a foreign government trying to steal information.
MAN: This is really the treasure-trove of juicy details.
You've got all the inside of political gossip,
you've got which MPs are in favour of which policies
and which ones are dissenting.
And you've got also quite a lot of personal information about voters.
Australia's government already has teams of experts
working on keeping our networks secure
and they say that job will only be more important in the future.
On Instagram again, are we?
She's been on there for hours.
While those experts work on protecting the country,
there are some things you and I can do
to protect ourselves from cybercriminals,
like having hard-to-guess passwords,
and keeping them to ourselves,
ignoring any dodgy-looking emails or texts
and thinking twice about what we download and share online.
And password changed.
Done.
Ah. Hm.
(SIGHS) Back to Instagram.