Learn English with the News: Cyber Crime

http://www.engvid.com/ What's a security breach, cyber heist, or identity theft? Learn the modern vocabulary of crime with this essential English News lesson. Find out how cyber criminals affected 70 million customers, what problems they caused, and how to protect yourself. Understanding this English vocabulary and these dangers can help keep you safer in today's world. Take the quiz on this lesson here: http://www.engvid.com/cyber-crime/

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. This is Rebecca. In today's English In the News lesson, we're going to talk about cyber theft. So what does "cyber theft" mean? The word "cyber" has to do with computers. And the word "theft" has to do with stealing. All right? So let's look at three headlines that were in the news recently regarding this subject of cyber theft. You'll also learn lots of other vocabulary related to the same theme.

So the first headline said, "Target data theft affects 70 million". "Target", you should know, is the name of a very large retail store in the United States and Canada and some other places, perhaps. I know they are in Canada and the U.S. "target payment card heist." "Target security breach." Okay? These were three different headlines in three different newspapers about the same situation, the same story. Let's see what words they chose to use.

So here, we have "Target data theft." So that means data -- or "data" -- was stolen, and it affected 70 million people. Here, they said "Target payment card heist". So what's a "heist"? "Heist" is another word which means "robbery" or "stealing". Another way is "Target security breach." So what's a "breach of security"? A "breach" is a kind of violation, when somebody does something illegally that they are not allowed to do. They go over some limit that they were not allowed to pass; that's a "breach". And in this case, it was a breach of -- or violation of -- security. All right? So you have three different ways that they refer to it already. "Data theft", "payment card heist", "security breach". See how you can pick up these expressions -- all right? -- to improve your English?

Let's look out at a paragraph about that story. I'll just read it for you first. "Retail giant Target confirmed a pre-Christmas cyber attack at over 1700 U.S. stores, resulting in payment card and identity theft of over 70 million customers." Okay. A lot of information. A lot of journalistic writing -- packs in a lot of information, especially in the first paragraph. They're supposed to tell you who, what, when, where, why -- if they can -- or how in that one paragraph because in case you don't have time to read the rest, at least you've got the main information.

So let's see if we can figure out what that information was. So who were the victims here? Who was affected by this crime? Well, "Retail giant Target" -- Target store was affected, and as a result, their customers were affected. These were the victims of this attack, this cyber attack.

Who were the criminals? Well, those who did the cyber attack. They're sometimes known as cyber thieves; they're known as cyber hackers. But you'll see this term "cyber" because they're not just regular thieves. They steal through the means of the computer. Okay?

What was the crime? You've now learned many expressions to describe this crime. But let's see what we've found here. We have also found here "cyber attack", "payment card theft", "identity theft", along with what we had up here, "data theft", "heist", and "breach". Right? "Security breach." So what is "identity theft"? What does it mean to steal somebody's identity? Well, it means to take all of their personal and private information -- their name, perhaps their email address, their credit card information, their address, things like that, phone number. And then, they might try to use your credit card and give your information in an illegal way. So that's called "identity theft", stealing somebody's identity, pretending to be that person, to do a fraudulent or illegal kind of transaction. Okay?

And when did this happen? Okay. Did you find the information in this paragraph to tell you when it happened? It said "pre-Christmas cyber attack." Pre-Christmas" means "before Christmas". Okay.

And where did it happen? Which places were affected by it? Here. 1700 U.S. stores. All right? We can say the number like that, "seventeen hundred". You can also say "one thousand seven hundred". All right?

So here, if you continue to read the story, you would find more vocabulary that you could pick up. So here are three things that Target did after that -- after this happened -- and three things that they asked the customers to do. So let's look at vocabulary they used here.