There are many crimes that are committed through the Internet, many of which are committed to make money. With the Internet growing rapidly, so is the rate of crime over the Internet with a whole host of methods that are used by the criminals to steal identities and money.
Computer crime is generally committed by criminals in order to either:
· Steal money
· Steal data or information
· Steal someone’s identity
· Damage or disrupt someone’s system for revenge
· Cause general havoc for fun
· Copy software, films, and music to avoid having to pay for it.
The theft of money is probably the biggest and most common type of Internet crime due to the growth of commerce that is now done through the Internet with the use of credit and debit cards. Theives are able to obtain the credit card details when people use their credit or debit cards on an unsecure website or by sending out emails to large numbers of email addresses ‘phishing’ for the customer to send back their personal information including their credit and debit card details. ‘Phishing’ literally means “way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication”.
Theft of data is another common type of Internet crime especially stealing data from big online companies like PayPal and eBay. Data is considered to be one of the most valuable thing a business can hold about customers or about any type of stakeholder the business has, whether it be shareholders or supplier all the data they posses is very important and if it is lost then it can cause various consequences. A consequence could be something as big as having the press print bad publicity about the business in a worldwide newspaper causing the business to lose a lot of respect that they may or many not have built up. Another consequence that may lead to losing customers threw not providing a good service is due to losing data the business would have to gather the information again which would take time, which could cause products or services would be delivered late and could then lead to cash flow problems.
Phishing is one of the biggest types of fraud that is committed over the Internet but there are other types of fraud that are committed. Criminals go through long processes to try and make you hand over your bank account details, generally when a phishing email is sent, it has a link attached to the email that will direct you to a website, a website that will look exactly the same as your bank’s website, before you are able to do anything you will be asked to enter your log on details and once you have done this your log in credentials will be sent to the fraudster who will then be able to find out all of your personal information and bank details to steal money from your accounts. Another way in which criminal commit fraud over the Internet is by guaranteeing customers a ‘get rich quick’ scheme if you pay a large sum of money for a pack containing all the information you would need to succeed in something like this, this type of online crime seems to be generally aimed at elderly people by the fraudsters as they think they would be more liable to buy the fake product.
Cyber bullying is another crime that is committed a lot in today’s society, especially with the introduction of many social networks that bring friends or enemies together on the Internet. With the social networks forever growing and hundreds of new users registering with the social networks daily, the amount of times this type of crime is committed increases as well.
With the information age growing rapidly, so is the ways in which online crime and other types of crime are prevented. One of the biggest changes that the information age has bought to the crime is dealt with, is the use of databases. The police are able to keep a record of any previous convictions of every human being in the country on a computer hard drive, by having it on the computer it reduces the amount of time it takes for the police to search for the person’s record, this helps when taking mandatory checks of teacher’s and people who work with children’s records.
The information age has introduced the invention of CCTV and security cameras and these two things are now massively important to the police and the way the investigate crimes. CCTV, otherwise known as closed circuit television, means the use cameras that capture video footage to transmit to a signal to a specific place on a set of monitors. They were first installed in 1994 after experiments were done in the UK many years before and were deemed successful, at first the video cameras were generally used in areas that need monitoring as crime is very prominent in a specific area, places such as banks, night clubs/pubs, casinos, airports, and convenience stores, as they were thought to be very successful to be helping the police solve crimes better than ever before, the systems were later to be installed to cover most city centres over the UK, many train and bus stations, car-parks and estates.
Another piece of high technological equipment that has helped the police in preventing crime is the introduction of security tags in retail stores and other places. The security tags are attached to all products in the store and when the customers purchase an item the employee would remove the tag as if the tag were not removed then when the customer leaves the shop, an alarm would sound, as sensors will have sensed that there are tags on the product. This helps prevent theft from retail stores as if a thief runs out of the store with an item with a tag on it, the alarm will sound alerting employees and other members of the public that something is being stolen. Another feature to the security tags is that even if the product is stolen then there is now ‘inked security tags’ which, when removed, spills ink over the product leaving it either broken or unable to use, this ink cannot be washed out either.
Overall, prevention of crime has become much easier with the introduction of pieces of advanced technology including such things as security tags and CCTV hardware.
No comments:
Post a Comment