Yaounde: ANTIC schools journalists on understanding cybercrimes for effective reporting.

The workshop seeks to equip journalists with relevant knowledge and skills that would help them to report on cybercrime cases accurately, ethically, effectively and in doing so, contribute to the responsible use of ICTs.

The Yaounde training was officially opened by the Head of Communications, Public Relations and Marketing Unit at ANTIC, Ngwainbi Afuh Percy. He represented the Director General of ANTIC, Prof Ebot Ebot Enaw at the event.

In his remarks, the representative of the Director General of ANTIC presented several opportunities offered by Information and Communication Technologies, ICTs to journalism in this digital age. 

Afuh Percy stated the mission of ANTIC which is to build a sane cybersecurity culture in Cameroon by promoting the safe and responsible usage of ICTs, adding that this has helped reshaped the journalism industry.

He said ICT has become an integral part of everyday life, enabling users to study, buy or sell, carry out medical consultations as well as banking transactions, share information and get feedback from government services from the comfort of their homes with just a simple click via e-learning, e-commerce, e-health, e-banking and e-government platforms.

To him, although digital technologies offer enormous benefits, their adoption and use have equally triggered a new form of crime known as cybercrime.

“Cybercrime has emerged as one of the newest and most challenging form of delinquency and has witnessed an upsurge recently in Cameroon due to the exponential increase in Internet penetration rate from 4.3% in 2010 to over 45.6% in 2023,” Afuh detailed.

Cybercrimes

The ANTIC Head of Communications, Public Relations and Market Unit presented scamming, identity theft, phishing, web-defacement,  skimming and to some lesser extend as fake news as the most common forms of cybercrime. He said scamming represents about 80 percent of cybercrimes recorded by ANTIC. 

“There is equally phishing. This attack leverage social engineering by spoofing the e-mail or website address of an institution and exploiting human emotions to trick victims into releasing sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details,” he mentioned.

On identity theft which is the creation of fake social media accounts, with personal identifying information of someone else for the purpose of cyber blackmail or extortion, Afuh Percy disclosed that ANTIC has since 2018 detected over 6,650 fake accounts of which 4,625 have been closed down.

He said this has been done thanks thanks to the existing collaboration between ANTIC and Facebook. 

“Most incidents of identity theft in Cameroon target high profile state dignitaries and State institutions,” he underlined. 

The ANTIC official went on to add that over 30 Cameroonian public administrations have been victims of web-defacement; - an attack in which cybercriminals fraudulently change the appearance of a website.

Afuh Percy said besides these cybercrimes, there is fake news, which has hit unprecedented proportions with the advent of online social media which has given the latitude to propagandists and citizen journalists to publish unverified and distorted information. 

“In this light, ANTIC avails itself to provide technical expertise to journalists in the development of a fact checking platform that would enable media professionals to detect and counter the propagation of fake news be it text, images, audio or videos clips created by malicious individuals for their propaganda campaigns on social media,” the ANTIC official averred. 

Referring to cybercrime as the “crime of the future”, he said the fight against this phenomenon requires concerted efforts.

Curbing cybercrime he said, can be achieved partly with the aid of mass media and well-trained journalists who are best placed to provide citizens with crucial information and knowledge which they need to make informed decisions on their usage of ICTs.

The Dawn president says training timely

Veteran journalist, Tricia Oben, speaking as president of the association, said in the current digital era, the media is supposed to play a key role in educating the public on how to avoid being victims of cybercrime.

“A journalist who isn’t trained or is not knowledgeable on issues like cybercime, cyber criminality or cyber security cannot easily communicate the right information. We are grateful that ANTIC offered us this opportunity…,” Oben said.  

By the time the workshop ends today, the participants would have grasped what Cybersecurity and Privacy Regulations, Cybersecurity Incident Response and Crisis Management, Cybersecurity and Disinformation Campaigns and Online Community Building are all about.