The Cyber Ambassadors Breda have won the Hein Roethof Prize 2022. In this project, volunteers inform their neighbors about the risks of cybercrime. According to the Center for Crime Prevention and Security (CCV), this approach deserves the top prize this year.
The Breda winner received 20,000 euros and a small work of art from the Minister of Legal Protection, Franc Weerwind, in Haarzuilens on Monday afternoon.
The CCV awards the prize every two years to an organization that improves social safety in a refreshing way. Also Bubble Games was nominated. With this project, groups in Eindhoven who do not get along are brought together with the technology of Virtual Reality. In this way they can put themselves in the position of the other person, which can be enlightening.
Attentive Breda agent
It was an observant police officer in Breda who noticed in the reports how easily people become victims of online crime. More and more crime is moving to the internet. Due to the great anonymity and because app messages, emails and fake websites offer a large reach, more and more people are being scammed online.
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In large part, the success of cyber criminals is due to the ignorance of many users of digital devices. If we educate people more, we can prevent many victims from being made, the policeman thought. And this laid the foundation for Cyber Ambassadors Breda. Leaflets, information evenings and other means are used to try to reduce the chance that people will become victims of, for example, fraud via messages on Whatsapp.
The volunteers involved in this follow a training which was compiled by Avans University of Applied Sciences, the police and the municipality.