Taking a Closer Look at Cyber Crime Issues
By Andrew Wilson
Cyber crimes have become a bane of society, costing billions of dollars and causing individuals to suffer immeasurable loss. There are multiple cyber crime issues that worsen the burden of these crimes.
Privacy as a Cyber Crime Issue
Privacy has become a major issue in relation to cyber crime. Each culture and each society has its own definition of privacy and the legal environment that creates laws on cyber crimes arises from this definition. It is therefore not surprising to find that there is no unified or standardized approach to the matter of privacy in cyber crimes.
Cyber Security
Cyber security is one of the toughest cyber crime issues to settle and chances are it will continue to be an issue for as long as people use the Internet and technology continues to advance in the field of telecommunications. Securing the Internet by shielding websites, software, and computers from cyber crime attacks is a mission that involves cream-of-the-crop interdisciplinary collaboration. Meeting the constant challenge of keeping away hackers, bots, viruses and malware takes the combined efforts of people from law, criminology, sociology, forensics, digital technologies and economics.
Security is the key to keeping cyber criminals at bay but along with technological progress, new and better ways of committing cyber crimes have surfaced. It has become possible for botnets to command thousands of compromised PCs to carry out commands to attack a target; even web sites owned by companies with vast resources have become vulnerable to attacks.
cyber crime
serious cyber crime issues
Lack of Consistent Legislation
There is a problem concerning consistent legislation in relation to cyber crimes. Definitions of crimes and their elements vary among countries and states so that what is considered illegal in one location may be legal in another. There are also occasions when acts considered seriously criminal in one country are not vested with the same gravity in other countries. In some countries for example, laws are more lenient about pornography than others. At the same time, in some countries penalties for the same crime are much lighter than those imposed in others.
Jurisdiction
The nature of cyber crime is that a perpetrator is usually miles away from where the crime explodes. For example, a cyber criminal can be in one state and cause a DoS (denial-of-service) attack on computers in other states. In this case, there can be ambiguity about which state’s law enforcement agency is in charge of arrest and investigation.
Anonymity
Anonymity is one of the biggest issues law enforcers and forensic technologists have to contend with as they try to gather sufficient evidence to file winning cases. It is often very difficult (though not impossible) to determine the identity of a criminal before the legal process can even begin. However, identities can easily be hidden in the Internet through services that hide an IP address and bounce it through several servers. An expert once suggested that Internet users be obliged to have “Internet passports” to put an end to anonymity but there is little hope that this can ever be imposed.
User Protection
Most cyber crime issues need to be addressed primarily by the international community. However, this does not mean that the ordinary Internet user needs to stand helplessly by while cyber criminals attack.
There are some simple ways for ordinary people to improve Internet security.
One of these is for people to always log out when they are done with a website.
Another way is to have good passwords and to change these regularly.
The other thing that people need to learn to do in order to protect themselves is to be careful with downloads or clicking any button in any web page.
Finally, it is important to exercise caution when using social networking because cyber criminals often find victims through these sites.
Cyber crime raises several issues within our modern culture. It isn't just about losing money or identity to thieves. This article looks at several issues related to the cyber crime theme.
