Major companies like Target and the Home Depot have suffered some of the most severe cyber attacks in the past several years, but they’re not the only ones who can fall victim to online criminals.

These are the three most common cyber crimes targeting individuals this year, and how to avoid them:

Mobile Monsters

The Scam:

An estimated $22 billion will be spent on mobile e-commerce in 2015 as retailers, restaurants, banks and more develop mobile apps that allow users to connect their accounts to the app for quick, easy payments using their smartphones.

These apps create an easy, time-saving way to shop and bank online, but experts say that convenience is the biggest threat.

“The real concerns I have about mobile involve consumers getting used to a whole new way of paying for things, which always opens the door for confusion and scams,” said consumer protection expert Bob Sullivan.

With so many people drawn to the ease of mobile payments, cyber criminals are finding ways to scam individuals by creating fake mobile payment apps or hacking into legitimate accounts.

The Solution:

To stay safe from getting scammed by apps and other mobile purchasing options, stay vigilant about what you’re downloading, and don’t get too comfortable with easy mobile purchases.

It’s best to only download the official app offered by a retailer or your bank, and stay on top of your transactions so that you can catch any irregular charges or payments as soon as possible. If you choose to use a third-party app, make sure to create a unique password and opt for multiple security settings.

ATM Dangers

The Scam:

Withdrawing money from an ATM has become increasingly more dangerous, with a 174 percent increase in successful debit-card compromises at ATMs on bank property since 2014, and a 317 percent increase at non-bank ATMs.

Cyber hackers are acquiring card information from ATMs by hacking into large databases to empty accounts, shop online or create fake credit cards, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Solution:

There is no concrete solution to this cyber crime yet, so it might be best to avoid ATMs altogether.

If you must withdraw money from an ATM, only use machines at your bank and always cover the keypad when entering your pin number.

Service Fraud

The Scam:

This type of cyber con-artist aims to hit you where you’re most vulnerable, either offering too good to be true deals or scaring you into paying a fine you don’t owe.

For example, here in Arizona, temperatures are guaranteed to skyrocket come summertime, leaving thousands of residents dependent on air conditioning. Cyber criminals are known to pose as your electric company, sending out emails offering services for irresistibly low prices or sending threats to shut off your electric if you don’t pay a certain fee.

The Solution:

These emails can be convincing, but don’t be caught off guard by official-sounding language, use of familiar logos or low prices.

If you receive this type of email, look for details that might be off. The colors used in the logo might be a few shades different than your company’s actual logo or the email may not address you by name – these are just a few warning signs to look out for.

If everything else about the email is normal, but the prices offered are extremely low, do your research. Look around online for the same offer or call the company directly to be sure.

Should America be preparing for a national spike in crime?

In addition to what seems like a never ending stream of reports of violent incidents between police and citizens, community unrest and protests in the wake of heavily publicized cases like that of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, large cities like New York have reported an increase in violent crimes and gun violence.

Although there’s no doubt these incidents have shocked the nation and certain crimes have increased in some parts of the country, the question now is whether these events are a reflection of crime rates for the US as a whole.

Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote an op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal called, “The New Nationwide Crime Wave,” which generated a significant amount of buzz about crime rates around the country.

One of the most controversial points made in the article is that police are at greater risk for attack, and are afraid to serve their communities due to heavy criticism of their professional judgment when it comes to using force on the job.

She explains that the deaths of “Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police.”

Additionally, In New York, where there has been an impressive decline in crime over the past 20 years, crimes and homicides involving guns have increased. There have been 439 shootings so far this year, which is 20 percent higher than the number of shootings recorded in the same period in 2013.

Mac Donald suggests that this increase is a warning sign for a crime wave that is set to sweep across the rest of the country.

Although the information in Mac Donald’s article may be true, several other sources quickly refuted her claims, asserting that a new crime wave does not exist and her story is more alarmist than it is accurate.

Radley Balko, a criminal justice blogger for the Washington Post, countered McDonald’s claims with an article of his own a week later.

Balko argues that while anger against police brutality may be the cause of increased violence in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore, they are certainly not the only issues involved.

“Two of the factors that cause homicides to soar in American cities are a sense of a loss of government legitimacy, and a loss of a feeling of belonging among outcast or historically oppressed groups,” Balko said, citing Randolph Roth’s, American Homicide.

When it comes to police homicides, Balko explains that several officers were tragically lost due to violence in Ferguson and Baltimore; however, those were isolated incidents that don’t represent the rest of the country’s more peaceful efforts.

Ultimately, Balko argues that Mac Donald’s points could prove to be true when the crime reports for 2015 are available, but for now, there’s not enough evidence to support such alarming claims.

Instead, her article is a distraction from the more important issue at hand, which is the relationship between police agencies and the communities they serve.

“There’s some data suggesting that the 20-year decline in violent crime may have hit bottom. In a country of 380 million people, you aren’t going to reduce crime to zero. In some cities, there have been some recent increases in some crimes, just as there were all throughout the crime drop,” he said.

The Detroit man who argued self defense for shooting and killing an unarmed teen on his front porch was convicted of second-degree murder by a Wayne County jury Thursday, August 7.

Theodore Wafer, a 55-year-old airport worker, heard banging on his front door early in the morning on Nov. 2. He opened the front door of his home and shot Renisha McBride through the locked screen door, killing the 19-year-old student.

Wafer testified saying that he shot McBride in self defense because he feared a break in and was scared for his life, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Why McBride ended up at Wafer’s home that night is still not clear, however prosecutors claim she walked a half mile to his home seeking help after a car accident.

Earlier that night, after consuming alcohol and using marijuana, McBride drove her car into a parked vehicle in Detroit. She was injured at the time, bleeding, disoriented and possibly suffering from concussions, but witnesses said she refused help after the incident, USA Today reports.

Initially, this case sparked racial concerns in Detroit communities where racial tension can be strong, and comparisons were drawn between the McBride and Trayvon Martin cases as both involved unarmed, black teens who were each killed by white men.

Unlike the Trayvon Martin case however, the charges were filed against the defendant within two weeks of McBride’s death and racial concerns were put to rest.

“That could have been anybody’s kid,” said Walter Simmons, McBride’s father, in response to race being a factor in his daughter’s death.

“I think he was ready for whoever came to his door,” Simmons said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Michigan’s gun laws, such as the Castle Doctrine Law states in short that the use of deadly force may be accepted as an act of self-defense as long as an honest and reasonable belief that death, great bodily harm that may lead to death or sexual assault may result to himself or herself or another individual during a break in, home or business invasion, an unlawful occupation or an attempt to remove individuals from their homes or vehicles, according to the state’s Public Act 311 of 2006.

In other words, residents have the right to protect their homes, businesses and vehicles using firearms, but the severity of the force used must match the potential threat.

A jury of five women and seven men did not believe that circumstances between McBride and Wafer granted Wafer the right to use deadly force against McBride, and they did not accept his self defense claims.

Wafer was convicted of second-degree murder, as well as separate charges of manslaughter and using a firearm to commit a felony, the Wall Street Journal said.

Monica McBride, Renisha’s mother, said that her daughter was not a violent person and that Wafer should have called 911 for assistance when he was awoken.

The sentencing will take place August 25. Wafer could face life in prison, according USA Today.

Make sure you know and understand Arizona’s self defense and violent crime rights. The expert criminal law attorneys at Corso Law Group can help.

Emotional videos are being presented in court to mitigate defendant sentencing in hopes of a more lenient verdict.

These documentary-style films, typically featuring the convicted person along with interviews of family, friends and coworkers offering good judgement on the defendant’s character and lifestyle with the goal of inspiring a lighter sentencing, could be the newest trend reaching court rooms nationwide.

Under federal law, convicted persons have the right to present the court with any information that may lessen his or her sentencing, and now documentary-style films are being utilized more frequently in some public defenders’ offices to supplement letters and memorandums that are more normally presented in the mitigation process, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Randy Ray Rivera of Massachusetts pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute crack-cocaine in 2013. Federal prosecutors sought a very typical 30 years in prison to life sentence for an offender of Rivera’s caliber; he had more than a dozen drug-related convictions since 1998.

A federal district judge in Vermont sentenced Rivera to only 12 years in prison, less than half of the sentencing prosecutors had argued for.

How is this possible? A sentencing-mitigation video may have been the key in Rivera’s case.

Rivera was the subject of a film which featured him in prison uniform while at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as well as his siblings, children, girlfriend and a social worker who all spoke on Rivera’s tough past that drove him to support his family by dealing drugs as a teen, such as his heroine-addict mother who died from AIDs.

While the use of these videos is rare, Doug Passon, a veteran assistant federal public defender in Arizona, believes they do aid the mitigation process, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“The sentences are almost always better than they would otherwise be,” Passon said of the use and effect of sentencing videos.

Passon was introduced to sentencing videos in 1995 when he was a law student at Washington University in 1995. He was a clerk for an attorney who used a powerful sentencing-mitigation video in the case of a man with drug charges who needed a lenient sentencing in order to be home with his wife who was dying of lupus.

Sentencing film festival at federal public defender training conferences have been held by Passon for the past five years, making him a trailblazer of the sentencing-mitigation video industry in the eyes of his peers.

Proponents of this technique, including some private lawyers and investigators, use the films to supplement their legal arguments and provide context to a defendant’s or victim’s life in order to convey information a court typically would not have access to otherwise.

The drawback, critics believe, is that the context that is being featured in these videos is not realistic because it’s edited, and the interviewed witnesses aren’t available in court for further questioning.

For example, most films, including documentaries, are edited to highlight a certain idea or point of view to communicate the message of the film to the viewer.

In the case of sentence-mitigating videos, a defendant’s actions may be put into context by allowing the opportunity to explain his or her life with the support of interviews of loved ones and neighbors. While this information can be used to put the crimes in context, the other side of the story isn’t communicated in these videos, such as the damage the crimes of these individuals may have caused a community.

Despite criticism and rejection from some courts, sentence-mitigating films are catching interest.

“There are definitely cases where a sentencing memo in black and white doesn’t cut it,” said Susan Randall in The Wall Street Journal.

Randall is a former documentary filmmaker who is now a private investigator in Vermont. She has produced over 20 sentence-mitigating films for a range of clients including Rivera.

Another proponent of these films is Katrina Daniel, a former TV crime reporter who started her own production company, has made 10 sentencing films since 2012.

Daniel charges $5,000 to $20,000 for her videos which can include interviews from the defendant and their supporters. Her films aim to portray the remorse and the acceptance of responsibility by the defendant.

There is no guarantee that the use of documentary videos will result in reduced penalties. In fact, thousands of federal cases still end in criminal sentences every year. However, sentencing videos are a new appeals strategy gaining popularity in law offices and drawing the attention of judges in court.