There was a time when the word cyber crime evoked images of brilliant hackers who would mess around complicated lines of cipher to try to get entry into financial institutions to pilfer money or steal personal information. Today it is hard to imagine that the crime has moved from cyberspace to being effected in the real world and people being held hostage with weapons to produce whatever it is that the criminals want.

Turns out that in today’s world cybercrime is effected physically and in fact in several instances the two incidents are related. Criminals are getting access to information of users who are not browsing with a hidden identity and this was illustrated in an occurrence in Australia, which has left many baffled as it moved from cyberspace in to the real world..

In May of 2012 a house in South-Eastern Australia, was broken into by two thieves barely moments subsequent to the homeowner’s teenager posting a photograph on facebook, which showed a significant sum of money that she had been tallying for her grandmother.

The teenager was not at home at that point when the robbers got in and nor was the money, but the mother who was present went through an ordeal in which she watched the thieves rummage through the house. They eventually took the little money that they found plus a few personal valuables and left.

Fortunately no one was injured in the incident, but that occurrence showed the real impact of browsing the internet without the hidden identity and the dangers that can arise. The circumstances in the incident could have easily taken a turn for the worse as it is still not clear how the robbers accessed family details despite the fact that they were not posted on the social site and tracked down the house.

To ensure that you hide your personal records for security purposes use a virtual private network, which will hide your IP address and effectively protecting your device and information.

The VPN puts in an assurance that only verified users will access the device and information contained therein. For business purposes, this is all the more useful in the protection of corporate secrets as well as persons who want to maintain their privacy, on social sites so that only friends can access the data not criminals.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.