Cyber Crime

Criminals have managed to survive despite all types of anti-criminals activities. They have spent life-times in prisons, bore the beatings of pipes and rods, and faced even social stigma. Hundreds of reformatory actions have improved lives of many criminals and they have agreed to behave in a socially accepted way. No one is born criminal they say, but no one is born saint as well. As long as society exists, crime will exist too; what might change is the nature of crime. Growing dependence on computers for works related to banking, governance and commercial activities often lead to face cyber attacks. Cyber crime, in simple words, is use of computer or other such devices to intentionally access or control another computer or computer network for personal objectives. 

Cyber criminals take disadvantage of internet and other electric devices like computer to hack into another computer system for varying purposes such as stealing sensitive personal data, blackmailing the users, asking for favors etc. Small scale cyber crimes involve ordinary net users as target by sending infected links or attachments through spams. On the contrary, cyber criminals operating in gangs now days target big firms like big and prestigious companies, banks, defense system of a government etc. 

With the advancement of technology and use of computers and internet in every field of life (Banking, Telecommunication, Travel, medicine and education etc.) such crime has grown rapidly. Issues surrounding this type of crime have become high-profile, particularly those surrounding hacking, copyright infringement, child pornography and child grooming etc. 

Ian Murphy, popular as Captain Zap amongst his fan, is considered the first person to be convicted of a case of cyber crime in 1981.

"Torture the data and it will confess to everything."- Ronald Coase

According to the  reports published in The Internet Crime Report for 2019, released by USA’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, India stands third in the world among top 20 countries that are victims of internet crimes. As per the report, excluding the USA, the UK tops the list with 93,796 victims of internet crimes followed by Canada (3,721) and India (2,901).

Cyber crime is an umbrella term used to describe two distinct, but closely related criminal activities: cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled crimes. In this review the use of ‘cyber crime’ refers to both forms of criminal activity, and we distinguish between them as outlined below. 

• Cyber-dependent crimes are offences that can only be committed by using a computer, computer networks, or other form of ICT. These acts include the spread of viruses and other malicious software, hacking, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, i.e. the flooding of internet servers to take down network infrastructure or websites. Cyber-dependent crimes are primarily acts directed against computers or network resources, although there may be secondary outcomes from the attacks, such as fraud. 

• Cyber-enabled crimes are traditional crimes that are increased in their scale or reach by the use of computers, computer networks or other ICT. Unlike cyber-dependent crimes, they can still be committed without the use of ICT. For the purposes of this review the following types of cyber-enabled crimes are included: fraud (including mass-marketing frauds, ‘phishing’ e-mails and other scams; online banking and e-commerce frauds); theft (including theft of personal information and identification-related data); and sexual offending against children (including grooming, and the possession, creation and/or distribution of sexual imagery).  

Cyber attacks are mostly performed either by an individual or in team work and could vary in intensity. For instance, some cyber attacks could be motivated for monetary purposes, other could be for security breach or even for more serious such as terrorist activities. 

Although email tops among cyber attacker as the most preferred medium other platforms are also gaining ground. Unnecessary and malicious emails are called spams in computer language. These spams could lead you to the dangerous platforms where your privacy and other important details could be collected without any permission. In addition, spams themselves could contain viruses which could negatively affect your computer system. 

Calling cyber criminals the smartest and most fortunate to have taken maximum advantage of continuously updated internet technology would not amount to exaggeration. Instead of cheating the users in normal ways, cyber criminals lure them into the riskiest places. Especially, the entertainment websites of dating and porn are the riskiest as when you intend to open some video, you are led automatically to another website. At once, pop-ups appear on the screens of your devices, if you open them by chance, they could ask you to install security apps under the pretext that your device needs protection as it is full of virus.

Many giant companies are now hiring hackers so as to fend off the attacks of other cyber criminals. This is called ethical hacking. In steadily growing cyber world, mere knowledge about cyber crime won't suffice. One must also learn about the ways through which one can keep oneself and at least friends and family members away from engaging or at least becoming victims of cyber crime.

First of all, cyber world is no more imaginary thing as envisioned in the early 80s. All the offline etiquette of behavior of applies online as well. Use of inappropriate words and hateful content is against the ethical standards of cyber world. One's slightest mistake in language could be misinterpreted by the receiver and lead to unwanted circumstances. Mostly in cases of young people committing suicides, it comes out that the suiciding person has had intense and emotional conversation with their beloved ones. 

The governments all around the world seriously understand the importance of digital platform. In order to maintain social equilibrium and stability, the governments put some restrictions on the free flow of freedom of expression. Especially, the hateful content could create a chaos amongst normal people. The laws are also made to avoid digital theft, copyright infringement and piracy of books, music and films. 

References:

1. https://www.le-vpn.com/history-cyber-crime-origin-evolution/#:~:text=1981%20%E2%80%93%20Ian%20Murphy%2C%20known%20as,hours%20rates%20at%20peak%20times.