A Brief Look at Cybercrimes

What is Crime? Many People may have different definitions about crime. Some might say crime is an act of offense/breaking the law and is punishable by conviction. Others might argue that crime is an act whereby offenders `might cause harm to the society and should be punished for their actions. Crime has been a great concern to the society as a whole. Sometimes offenders commit crimes intentionally to hurt someone they don’t like or just to cause harm to their fellow human beings. Some people might argue that, some crimes might refer to certain acts.

Crimes against people come in different forms; each belongs to a category. Crimes against persons are crimes that are violent in nature. While crimes against property involves the taking of property or money. Then, we have crimes of public morality; these are usually victimless crimes, meaning there is no true victim of the crime. Many scams and frauds fall into the white-collar crime, to include schemes and tax evasion. Finally, crimes that are committed with the use of a computer and/or various forms of technology are called cyber crimes. This essay will explain the different categories of crimes and give a true meaning by type of crime.

* • Cyber Crimes: Any act directed against computers or that uses computers as an instrumentality of a crime.

Crime according to the Oxford dictionary is defined as an action that involves an illegal act which causes harm to the public and is punishable by law. Crime although gets reshaped constantly due to history and time, for instance activities that used to be illegal, nowadays are not criminalized, such as same sex marriage and on the contrary, actions that are illegal today a hundred years ago were not. Besides that, the definition of crime gets also influenced by social, political, economic, religious and geographic aspects.

Cyber-Crime can be defined as the action of making an offence using computers, information technology and virtual reality that is punishable by law. Cyber-Crime can range from fraud, hacking, money laundering and theft, through to cyberstalking, cyberbullying, identity theft, child sexual exploitation and child grooming. The specific type of Cyber- Crime that will be explored sexting. Which can range from sending sexually explicit pictures and messages and also, others taking sexually explicit pictures of you.

Crimes are defined by criminal law, which refers to a body of federal and state rules that prohibit behavior the government deems harmful to society. If one engages in such behavior, they may be guilty of a crime and prosecuted in criminal court

Virus is a code that attacks the network system and computer. This happens because the data files are contaminated and this is done on a system through the internet or disk. The virus tries to hid it self and send it self to others. The virus is harmful to your computer.

Technology is used in this world by many people. They use it to perform research, communicate, teach, perform medical procedures, commit a crime, and so forth. Since it can be used for various reasons, it can be also be used against a person in a court of law as evidence in a case. As technology advances and more people use technology for their own purposes, cybercrime also increases in society.

Crime is human conduct in violation of the criminal laws of a state, the federal government, or a local jurisdiction that has the power to make such laws.

Cyber Crime is described as criminal activity committed via use of electronic communications with respect to cyber fraud or identity theft through phishing and spoofing. There are many other forms of cyber-crime also such as harassment, pornography etc. via use of information technology.

Cyber crime and traditional crime have similar identifiable traits when criminal activity is the outcome. The goal of any criminal is to cause harm, threat steal, extortion, to name a few with intent to harm the public good. Local and state law prosecutes traditional crimes through the state attorney. The prosecutor represents the people(entity) of the state. The defendant or the entity charged must prove to the state, by reasonable doubt, their innocent’s of the charges. Individuals that are charged with a crime have the option of hearing their case in front of a judge or a jury. The prosecution can also offer the defendant a plea bargain deal. These deals usually lessen the punishment while also rendering a guilty verdict

Computer crime refers to any violation of the law in which a computer is the target or means of criminal activity (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2014, p.113). Computer crime is also known as cybercrime. Cybercrime continues to have far reaching effects because it affects individuals, companies, and organizations and is increasingly a problem in the globalized world we live in. This is because we rely so much on cell-phones, computers, and us many social network sites. Cybercrime is considered a social problem because it negatively affects a large group of people in our society. In 2014, there were 1.5 million cyber attacks worldwide (“IBM Cyber Security Intelligence Index,” 2015, pg.13). One type of computer crime is identity theft. Identity theft is the use of someone else’s personal information to obtain credit or other economic rewards (Mooney, et al, 2014, pg.113). Identity theft first became a crime in 1998, when Congress passed the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act

Computer crime is defined by the U.S. Department of Justice as any violations of criminal law that involve knowledge of computer technology for their perpetration, investigation, or prosecution. Computer crime laws in many states prohibit a person from performing certain acts without authorization, including:

Crime is a typical word that we generally heard in this globalization period, Crime is related to violations of the law or it is related to the commission of a demonstration prohibited by law .In this technological world cybercrime is the new kind of crime. There is a considerable measure of definitions for cybercrime. According to Wikipedia Cybercrime also known as computer crime which requires computer and network and network connected device such as mobile. Cybercrime is characterized as violations conferred on the web utilizing the computer as either an instrument or a targeted victim. Other than that Cybercrime can be characterized as violations submitted on the web utilizing the computer as either an instrument (Joseph An E, 2006).

There are many ways that cybercrimes are conducted. One particular offense is the case of cyber bullying and or harassment personal pictures hacked from a specific personal computer.