( CNN ) -- Major crimes usually shake us into action . A London fire that killed five women ultimately led to the creation of 999 , a precursor to our own 911 emergency system . The rape and murder of Kitty Genovese , meanwhile , inspired the creation of the neighborhood crime watch system . Yet while the Sony Pictures Entertainment email breach is a different sort of crime , it is a crime nonetheless , and one that was perpetrated in a neighborhood where almost all of us are resident these days -- the Internet . So where is the anger ? The letters to congressmen ? Part of the reason is that the reporting has focused on celebrity feuds rather than the fact that what happened to Sony could happen to any of us -- emails of a personal nature allegedly being held ransom or released as payback . In fact , if you add up the number of victims of the most notable known breaches this year , it 's clear that a troublingly high percentage of us will have had some sort of information hacked . The other reason is that few of us feel like we 're paying a price for cyberbreaches -- companies that are hacked typically eat the costs , at times without even informing customers . But lost in the reporting is another fact : We are , in a very real sense , responsible for such attacks . Not simply because we are the audience for the hacker 's seedy releases , but because we are the inadvertent moles that provide the hackers access to large computers networks . Hackers often enter networks through simple phishing attacks , attacks that these days are actually simpler but more insidious than the infamous Nigerian phishing scams . Now , instead of trying to persuade you to part with your money in exchange for a nonexistent financial windfall , emails from trusted sources ask you to check out a photograph , click on a hyperlink to an interesting story or enter your login on an official-looking webpage . Complying with any of these requests provides varying degrees of access to your devices and accounts , and it is these simple ruses that have been responsible for launching malware and `` backdoors '' that have ultimately compromised major networks . The apparent simplicity of these attacks conceals a sophisticated understanding of people 's online behavior that is surprising even to the many academics who have spent years studying human behavior . The reality is that many of us fall for these scams because of our email habits . Simple actions such as frequently checking email or Facebook status updates have become part of the daily rituals of Internet use . The human brain overtime automates such routines , which leads to people clicking on hyperlinks , opening attachments and providing credentials without really paying attention to what they are doing . Smartphones and tablets have only exacerbated this . After all , smartphones , which the majority of us now use to access the Internet , are designed for media consumption , not deception detection . Their apps are programmed to optimize smaller screen sizes and restricted data-caps , often by reducing the prominence of elements such as a website 's URL or a sender 's email address that could highlight the deception . Throw into the mix the fact that many of us are accessing these devices while talking , texting or even driving , and it 's hardly surprising that we do n't notice something nefarious . Making things worse , even some people who suspect a deception open such emails anyway because of flawed assumptions about the security of their devices and operating systems . Others might report the intrusion to their employer , but the reporting either comes too late or is lost in organizational silos . This is not surprising -- there are so many different arms of federal and state governments , along with organizations such as the Anti-Phishing Work Group , that collect complaints and disseminate information on cyberattacks that it is hard to keep track of where to send details of a complaint , much less go through the process of finding a contact address . Besides , there is no incentive for reporting a suspicious email unless someone has actually become a victim of an attack , in which case , it is generally already too late . So , what can be done ? A simpler fix would be to develop a single nationwide gateway -- an email address or a phone number similar to the 911 system -- where anyone suspicious of a cyberthreat can quickly report it . In addition , it would be a welcome development to see the proliferation of organizations akin to neighborhood watch groups -- cyberwatch groups , if you will -- where people can routinely report suspected attacks and receive immediate feedback . From Aurora to Regin and the Nigerian scam , most cyberintrusions are named after the codes written into them or the hacker 's fake persona , which cedes power to the very people who perpetrate these crimes . Instead , would n't it be better to highlight the names of the people who help detect an attack ? This would be just one way that we could encourage people to feel they are more invested in protecting our cyberinfrastructure . Ultimately , the Internet is an online extension of our own neighborhoods . It 's time for us to take their protection just as seriously .
Public should be angered over Sony hacking , says Arun Vishwanath . Vishwanath : The public is angry because the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from cyber attacks and other forms of cybercrime. U.S. should develop a single nationwide gateway for reporting hacking , he says .