The Computer Crimes And Computer Related Crimes

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Computer crime basically is a crime that involves both of any type of a computer and a network. Another term that can be derived from this topic is called "NetCrime". The term "NetCrime" is used to refer the criminal exploitation with the use of Internet. Crimes or issues that have surrounded have become "high-profile". High-profile crimes or issues that have surrounded cybercrime are particularly about terrorism, copyright infringement, cracking or hacking, child pornography and privacy of information is lost or being intercepted.

The global nature of the Internet has allowed criminals to commit almost any illegal activity anywhere around the globe making it necessary for all countries in the world to adapt domestic offline controls to prevent crimes to be carried out.

Topology

Crimes that circle around computer crimes are in a broad range of activities. But in general, the crimes have been categorized into two categories:

Crimes made to target computers directly.

Or

Crimes that uses computer networks or any other computer devices.

Spam

The concept of spam is to flood the internet with many copies of the same particular message in an attempt to force the message on people who would not choose to receive it. Spam also can be defined as unsolicited email. [1] In addition, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. [2] 

How does spam work?

Spams could cause identity theft or worse.

Spams can be used a s a tool to spread or send Trojan horses, computer viruses or any other malicious software.

Types of spams:

Emails, IM (Instant Messaging), Newsgroup & Forums, Mobile phone messaging, social networking spam, social spam, online game message and etc.

Impacts of Spam

Every time a "spammer" sends out email spam, the entire Internet community would be affected, in particular the recipients and the ISPs at the receiving end. It wastes a lot of recipients' time and disk space. [3] There are a lot of issues created by spam such as:

Unwanted emails that irritate the users.

Critical email messages that are delayed or missed.

Loss of bandwidth and internet performance.

Compromised computers, up to millions and etc.

Fraud

Computer fraud is an act of dishonest misrepresentation intended to let someone to do something that causes a loss. Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. The definition computer fraud becomes ever complex with the ingenuity of people who intend to deceive, misrepresent, destroy, steal information, or cause harm to others by accessing information through deceptive and illegal means. [4] 

Types of Fraud

Online shopping and auction fraud

Advance-fee frauds

Application frauds

Non-investment fraud

Online dating fraud

Tips on protecting individuals on computer fraud

Be very vigilant and wary about handing over personal information to people you don’t know in particular if you’re being asked to give money upfront.

Be careful when putting personal information on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

When shopping online, sign up to Verified by Visa or MasterCard Secure Code whenever you are given the option when shopping online

Always install up-to-date anti-virus firewall and software to protect the PC.

Obscene and Offensive content

The content of websites and other electronic communications may be obscene or offensive for a variety of reasons. In some instances these communications may be illegal. [5] Contents such as pornographic websites are one of the common searched content in the internet. Offensive content refers directly to harmful contents that are found in pornographic websites or any potentially offensive content such as the act of "freedom of speech", such acts could be hate speech. Online bullying content found in social networking sites are now referred as "cyber-bullying". These contents are so troubling that it could affect children.

Cyber Pornography

Cyber Pornography is the most aggravated form of obscene content. "Images leave a strong and lasting message in our minds. Images are not easily erased and often surface at the most inopportune times." [6] The content brought by pornographic websites cause major psychological effects to the human mind especially to children who are able to access the content without prior knowledge and supervision. Cyber pornography can be also a gateway to other forms of cyber crime such as hacking, stalking or fraud.

Child Pornography

Child pornography is another form of pornographic web content that is in a form of child sexual exploitation. The law defines this content as a visual depiction of spreading sexually explicit conducts that involves a minor. [7] Those who are caught viewing, spreading and conducting child pornography content, if found guilty, are severely punished by any federal laws worldwide.

Websites such as YouTube bans any form of explicit content and offensive content being uploaded into the website.

Cyber Harassment

Cyber Stalking

Cyber stalking is a general pattern of malicious and threatening behavior that uses the internet, email or any other form of electronic communications to stalk someone. [8] 

Cyber Harassment

Cyber harassment is describing an action that relentlessly pursuing others online with an intention of embarrassing or frightening a victim. [9] This harassers will usually post nasty comments that it is intended to cause a distress to the victim or can cause the victim to be a subject to be harassed by others. They can also hack into the victim’s email and spread offensive contents to the victim’s relatives, friends, colleagues or all. Harassers also can lock this account so that the victims, disabling the victims to log into their accounts.

How do we deal Cyber Harassments and Cyber Stalking

Email passwords to be at least 7 with combinations of letters and numbers. Identification numbers, telephone numbers and birthdates are not strong passwords to use as they are easily obtained.

Change passwords on a frequent basis.

Do not leave your computer logged in and unattended.

To remain anonymous, users should not list their emails when filling forms on Web pages.

Cyber Terrorism

According to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) states that Cyber Terrorism is a premeditated, politically motivated against computer, information systems, computer programs and data which results in violence against non-combatants [10] by any terrorist groups, sub-national groups or agencies.

The terrorists can exploit the use and capability of the internet in particular for recruitment and the possibility of radicalization, it also possess a serious threat to national and international security.

Cyber attacks usually results into DDOS (Denial of Service) rather than viruses. Cyber attacks are designed to cause physical violence or financial harm. Possible cyber terrorist’s targets are:

Power Plants

Air Traffic control systems

Military Systems

Banks

Water Systems

Terrorists are the ones that cause an intense fear, dominate and control the use of terror for political or social objectives.

Cyber Terrorists are the individuals that uses a network and a computer technology to cause also an intense fear to do the exact same purpose of terrorism.

Why do they use cyber attacks?

It is basically cheaper than traditional methods, harder to track, able to hide their identities and locations, affect a very large scale of people, no physical barriers to cross and could be done anywhere around the world.

Cyber Warfare

Cyber warfare refers to the actions of a nation-state or an international organization to attack and damage another nation’s computers or information networks through viruses or Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attacks. [11] 

The attacks conducted on cyber warfare are similar to the ones with Cyber Warfare but the only difference is that cyber warfare also uses propaganda. Propaganda influences the minds of people in a very large scale.

How do we prevent such Cyber Terrorism/Warfare attacks?

Training/recruiting cyber specialists

Developing a covert cyber operations

Educating the public

Promoting cooperation between national security and law enforcement agencies

Eliminate infrastructural flaws

Establishing a highly effective and stealthier way of cyber defence

Conclusion

The threat imposed by computer crime is not as big as the authority claim as it is. This means that the actions that the authorities are introducing to combat it represents an unwarranted attack on human rights and is not proportionate to the threat posed by cyber-criminals. Part of the problem is that there are no reliable statistics on the problem; meaning that it is hard to justify the increased powers that the ministries of each country around the world have given to the authorities.

These powers will be ineffective because of the international treaties being drawn up to deal with it are so vague that it will become ineffective. It will affect the civil rights by the terms of the treaties since they could assume that everybody who owns a computer fitted with a modem could be suspected of being a hacker. The attempts to eliminate the possession of hacking software could harm people who are helping to make the internet much secure as they will not be able to test their systems. Therefore the legislation could do more harm than good.