Cybercrime in Developing Countries: Negative Effects and Panacea

Cybercrime could be described as criminal activities carried out using a computer, network, or any other known digital device. Some of these activities include unethical hacking, phishing, identity theft, ransomware, malware attacks, and software piracy, among many others. This heinous crime has been on a geometric rise in recent times in developing countries. This study explores cybercrimes in developing countries, various forms, negative effects, and the panacea to the ugly menace. In order to achieve this, an empirical study was carried out using a questionnaire from Google Form. Seventy individuals from different works of life in different States in Nigeria responded actively to the survey. Thus, it was easy to represent their feedback using some popular statistical tools like pie chart, a simple bar chart and percentages. This research work shows that indeed, cybercrime has eaten deep into the fabrics of developing countries and needs to be checkmated. This study will educate the populace in developing countries about the various negative effects and the solution to the impact of this illicit digital crime. It also exposed the flaws of individuals, private and public sectors, in compliance with standard cybersecurity measures. Above all, it was discovered that cybersecurity awareness in developing countries is actually below standard; hence, there is a need to intensify the process to curb or probably ameliorate the negative effects of cybercrimes in developing countries.