Nowadays, more than a third of the world’s population has internet access. Every day, people spend an imposing part of their life online. Despite the benefits provided by the World Wide Web, there is a need to confront all digital dangers, putting at risk online activity. One of the most rapidly growing areas of crime is cybercrime. As soon as the first computer networks were created, some people started trying to use them for their illegal purposes. Convenience, speed and anonymity, provided by today’s modern technologies, attract people to commit illegal activity over the Internet anywhere in the world.
A lot of facts indicate an importance of the cybercrime issue and some of them are really surprising:
- Cybercrime went beyond the lawless drug trafficking in terms of profitability;
- An identity becomes stolen every 3 seconds;
- The unprotected PC can be infected within 4 minutes after connecting to the internet.
Thereby, it is important today to become acquainted with the term “cybercrime” to eliminate the possibility of being a victim.
The definition of cybercrime
In general, cybercrime is defined as a committed crime involving a computer as a tool or a person behind it - targeted victim.
Cybercrime originated from the irritated employees, causing physical harm to their work computers by reason of revenge to their employers. When the opportunity to have a personal computer became more affordable, cyber criminals focused their attempts on home users. Eventually, home computer with internet access became common. At the same time, cyber crime expanded and became more complicated to control. The situation has become sophisticated after teenagers started to use the advantages of the access to the internet rather for abusing purposes. At this point, police departments and federal law enforcement have invented special departments specializing on the cybercrimes. However, analyzing the history and the present state of things, cybercrimes is not going to stop its existence soon.
A wide range of cybercrimes can be better introduced by dividing it into categorized types.
Common types of the cybercrime
Today, the concise list of most common cybercrimes can be presented in the following way: hacking, viruses, malwares, Trojans, fraud and harassment.
Hacking is a widespread type of cybercrime. Criminals illegally achieve the access to the business or personal computers, mobile phones and other digital equipment. The main purpose of this act is to go through important documents, copy the data or steal account numbers, passwords and other significant information.
One has to be careful about the viruses, malwares and Trojans. These malevolent bits of code were created with the certain aim of infecting computers, damaging files, installing unwanted or even needless programs.
Fraud is probably the main type of cybercrime to be aware of. It is usually committed for benefits in monetary terms. It includes phishing scam, identity theft, and other financial speculations.
Harassment, which may be referred to the cyber bullying and cyber stalking, is most commonly used on blogs and social media sites. In this case, the typical scheme is widely applicable. It might include publishing of abusive messages, humiliating and inappropriate photos, or posting of the personal information, such as home address, phone number, etc. Usually, harassment is directed at juveniles and adults alike, and may cause psychological damages to the victims.
It is always important to keep in mind that the Internet is not absolutely anonymous, and criminals mostly consider the anonymity as their advantage. However, it is not that difficult to block cyber crime or at least prevent one, as it may seem.
Prevention of Cybercrime
Prevention is always better in order to avoid becoming a victim of cyber criminal. It is a benefit to take special protection while using the internet. The following are some essential rules for preventing a cybercrime:
- To avoid cyber stalking, it is necessary to keep any personal information to oneself;
- To avoid sending personal photographs or credit card numbers online, especially to strangers and social network friends in case of misusing of this particular information;
- Use the last versions of antivirus software and guards against virus attacks and keep updating it;
- To prevent the data loss in case of virus attack, do not overload computer's capacity;
- It always gives an advantage while using firewalls;
- To pay more attention to the sites, which can be easily accessed by children;
To educate people on how to protect their privacy while operating in the internet, is the most important step on the way to be safe from cybercriminals.
Today, criminals committing cyber crimes use their knowledge to gain benefits quickly, to steal and exploit people. When it comes to cybercrime, it is physically possible for a criminal to be at two different places at the same time. For example, an individual can perpetrate a crime in Europe and feel perfectly secure and relaxed in the other side of the world. The given aspect makes the detection of cybercrimes more complicated, compared to the other crimes. Unfortunately, today cyber criminals also can benefit from the lack of interest of the government. Hence, it is clear that there is a need for international laws if any criminal justice system is going to stop the growing number of cybercrimes.
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