By Yiep Joseph<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cyber security experts are urging citizens to remain vigilant and follow safety measures as the country experiences an increase in cyber threats and online scams.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n During a joint press briefing on Tuesday, representatives from SafetyComm, DefyHateNow, and 211Check, have called on the public to be extra cautious as the number of cases rise due to increasing use of social media.<\/p>\n Nelson Kwaje, Chairperson of DefyHateNow revealed that in recent years, many South Sudanese have continued to be victims of cyber threats and scams.<\/p>\n \u201cSafetyComm has documented 854 incidents of compromised social media accounts of users due to these fraudulent cyber threats and scam activities in the South Sudan digital environment or space from 2021 to 2024,\u201d Kwaje said.<\/p>\n Of these, at least 460 accounts were recovered after the victims sought the support of SafetyComm, while 327 accounts remain unrecovered and 67 cases are pending.<\/p>\n Kwaje revealed that on social media platforms, 57.3% of the cyber threats and scam incidents were recorded from Facebook users, 22.8% from WhatsApp, 18.9% from Instagram, 0.9% from Telegram, and none from X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n This makes Facebook and WhatsApp platforms the most common grounds for cyber threats and scams being largely perpetrated by anonymous online actors.<\/p>\n He added that threats come in the form of phishing attacks disguised as legitimate messages and links yet malicious to trick users into revealing sensitive information.<\/p>\n \u201cBesides, cyber scams in South Sudan’s digital environments, specifically social media platforms, have been fronted in terms of fake free giveaways, job and investment opportunities, scholarships, and so on, in a manner of impersonating credible individuals and both private and public institutions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He added that the cyber threats and scams have compromised various social media users’ accounts, especially on Facebook, which led to identity theft, where individuals\u2019 personal information is stolen and used fraudulently.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore, today\u2019s joint advisory on cyber threats and scams serves to alert the general public and social media users in South Sudan about ongoing inauthentic false alarms regarding Facebook page verification, community standards violations, and copyright infringement with threats to shut down users’ accounts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kwaje added that several people in recent days received notification messages either directly in their social media, which appeared to be more dangerous.<\/p>\n He revealed that such an act is the exact tactic used by anonymous actors to exploit social media users to compromise their accounts.<\/p>\n In his part, Tony Robert, SaftyComm Incident Response Lead, called on the citizens to always report cases of cyber threats and scams to get help.<\/p>\n He advised that for one to Stay Alert and Stay Protected, there is a need to avoid clicking on a link that advertises free services, adding that it is a trick being used by cybercriminals and scammers.<\/p>\n Tony urged the public to appropriately use social media and avoid hate speech.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at our social media landscape, the problem online in our country is hate speech,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ochaya Jackson, Coordinator of 211 CHECK, encouraged individuals to seek assistance if their accounts are compromised to prevent data loss.<\/p>\n He appealed to the public to fight and shun misinformation and disinformation, citing that it is of serious harm to peace and unity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Yiep Joseph Cyber security experts are urging citizens to remain vigilant and follow safety measures as the country experiences an increase in cyber threats and online scams. During a joint press briefing on Tuesday, representatives from SafetyComm, DefyHateNow, and 211Check, have called on the public to be extra[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/A-team-of-Cyber-security-experts-issuing-a-joint-Advisory-to-the-public.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28959,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28957\/revisions\/28959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}