Cybercrime

CYBER CRIMES Classification Of Cyber Crimes Pavan Duggal, the president of cyberlaws.net and consultant, has clearly stated the three categories of cybercrimes: persons, property and government. (when) First of all, cyber crimes committed against persons, either individuals or a group of people include illegal acts like spreading of pornography, cyber harassment by electronic mails and even cyber stalking through social websites. Cyberspace, being renowned for its vast storage of all sorts of information has made it also the perfect place for storing, distributing, posting and disseminating obscene materials, especially pornography. With Google, anyone with access to computer and Internet could easily expose themselves to pornography materials and thus in danger of corrupting their mind and soul. Not only that, even individual’s email account could not escape from the disturbance of indecent mails, which are usually labelled as spam mail, as these mails are distributed across the globe and entering computer user’s email account without the receiver’s permission. Exposing young, innocent internet users to such indecent acts threatens the growth of future generations, not to mention the security of society from falling preys to rapists influenced by pornography online. Similarly, cyber harassment is a cybercrime towards individuals, whether occurring in cyberspace or through the use of cyberspace. It is categorized into several types, including sexual, racial, religious and other emerging issues. Anyone carrying out such harassments is considered guilty as charge, as their acts violate the rights and privacy of internet users. Cyber harassment is a selfish act, creating trouble and discomfort and thus seriously violated the right of citizen for a peaceful and private life. No one would like their life to be invaded by other people, let alone strangers. Next, another cyber crime against persons is that of cyber stalking. With the easily assessable information online, it is the perfect place for work, play and study. Some say, The Net is no more and no less than a mirror of the real world. Whatever crimes that happen in the real society, they can also easily occur in cyber space. Stalking and harassments are problems that many persons especially women, are familiar with in real life. When such problems occur on the Internet from using information online to stalk a person, such actions are considered “cyber stalking” or “on-line harassment”. With popular social websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, anyone can easily stalk a person as their private information, whereabouts and pictures could easily be misused by a stalker. The second category of Cybercrime is in the form of property. Property in cyberspace may include blogs, personal files stored online, business websites and any other relevant assets that can be found online. Illegal actions of such category include trespassing into other user’s computer, vandalism online and transmission of harmful programs or better known as computer virus. Stealing, altering, deleting or forging any information online is considered a cyber crime, as individuals and companies suffer losses from such actions. The list does not stop there only, as the worst crime in this category is hacking. Hacking and cracking are amongst the gravest Cybercrimes known till date. By accessing somebody’s computer without their permission, it not only makes them miserable, scared or angry, they would also no longer feel secured online, worrying excessively and in worst cases, discontinue any usage of internet. Nobody should undergo this dreadful experience, knowing that their precious confidential data and information is no longer secured and safe. As so, using one's own programming skills and experience of various programmes with malicious intent to gain unauthorized access to a computer or network is a very serious crime. Similarly, the creation and dissemination of harmful computer programs or virus which do irreparable damage to computer systems is another kind of cyber crime. Software piracy is also another distinct kind of cyber crime which is perpetuated by many people online who distribute illegal and unauthorized pirated copies of software. The third category of Cybercrimes relate to cyber crime against Government. Cyber terrorism is one distinct kind of crime in this category. The growth of Internet has shown that the medium of Cyberspace is being used by individuals and groups to threaten the international governments as also to terrorize the citizens of a country. This crime manifests itself into terrorism when an individual "cracks" into a government or military maintained website.