Under the supervision of the Dean of the College of Pharmacy, Assistant Professor Dr. Sarmad Hashim Al-Khatib, the Psychological Counseling and Educational Guidance Unit and Ibn-sina Unit, in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior/ Directorate of Technologies and Informatics /Department of Cyber-crime, held an awareness symposium on electronic extortion and ways to combat it on the Zoom platform. The symposium included a lecture entitled (The dangers of electronic extortion and its impact on society), as well as presented some cases of blackmailing that happen last months, and what are the legal steps that done if electronic extortion has happen. The symposium aimed to educate about the seriousness of electronic extortion, what are its consequences, and how personal accounts can be preserved from hacking, in addition to how to deal with blackmailers in the event of extortion. It dealt in detail the methods by which the blackmailer can obtain information, such as from devices (phones, computers, tablets…etc), or hacking social media accounts, or entrapping the victim through video chats, sending pictures, etc., or through sending fake websites that announcing jobs and appointments. The symposium also focused on ways used to protect against extortion, such as securing personal accounts, not accepting friend requests from unknown people, resetting the device (format), emptying it of data and refilling the storage memory with unimportant data before selling it, , preferably more than once, and other methods of protection. All the questions and inquiries of the students and professors were answered at the end of symposium.
