If you find out that someone among your family or friends has been a victim of a cyber crime, it’s essential to provide support and help them navigate the aftermath. As the spectrum of online crime goes from harassment to identity theft to fraud, – there can be wide range of traumatizing experiences for victims, but here’s some advice for how to help victims of cyber crimes.
Listening out to the victim of cybercrime helps validate their experience. Just as off-line crime, cybercrime can cause fear, anger, anxiety, and helplessness, so it is important to let your friend or family know that what their feelings are valid, and that they’re not alone. Rather than trying to persuade the victim that the incident they were through online is not as severe as if they were to be a victim of a physical violence, in-person bullying or actual burglary, consider asking open-ended questions, leverage empathy in conversation without judgement or making assumptions.
Cyberbullying, identity theft, online harassment, and cyberstalking can have just as serious emotional and psychological effects on the victim as the offline crimes, so should be treated just as seriously. In some instances, cyber crimes can prove to be more dangerous, as anonymity, distance and the constant access to technology provided for perpetrators can make it easier to engage in harmful behavior, and scale it to a wider audience, thus for the victims it will be harder to escape the abuse.
You can also to help the victim report the crime. If you friend or family feel overwhelmed and emotional, they will appreciate support with filing a police report or contacting the appropriate agencies. Sometimes even properly collecting and preserving evidence can be overlooked in the aftermath of the incident, so stepping in to properly gather and secure screenshots, emails, social media posts, financial records, digital photos and videos – will prove to be extremely valuable for investigation.
Along the lines of crime reporting, assistance with further securing accounts may be required. Beyond the help that might be provided by the entity the compromised account is associate with (e.g. bank), the victim might need some guidance with changing password(s), deleting the account, enabling two-factor authentication, or further monitoring credit reports for signs of fraud.
Finally, and again – this might not be obvious from the perspective of a first-time victim, there’re a variety of resources available for victims of cyber crimes, including victim advocacy groups, counseling services, and legal aid organizations. The victim may benefit from accessing these resources and receiving additional support, information, and guidance, in both recovering from the incident and reducing the risk of future victimization.
