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Computer Crime Essay

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The introduction of computers in to the modern household has brought with it new moral issues. In the last 10 years computers have become increasingly cheaper to buy, due to huge technological advances and fierce competition, driving prices down. It the wake of the computer revolution the internet has followed quickly, becoming faster, cheaper and more accessible. With these technological advances the world has become increasingly smaller enabling piracy and file sharing to become common practice. Society now has many new issues to work through, from invasion of privacy to the copying of movies and hacking.

To define exactly what computer ethics is a difficult task due to it being tied to an evolving technology, the field changes …show more content…

He suggested that the computer revelation is happening in two stages. The first is the introduction and enhancement phase. This stage has been and gone. The second stage is the implementation of computing into everyday life, in which the world is currently in the process of.

Computers are becoming apart of everyday activities, the threat is, this increases the chance of you becoming a victim of a form of computer crime [Khanna, 2005]. The notion of computer viruses or the thought that someone could hack into your computer from halfway around the world is certainly a major issue in the ideas of Computer Ethics. Where once physical security was the main problem, it appears that ‘logical security’ is considered more important [Khanna, 2005].

Spafford, Heaphy and Ferbrache divided the concept of logical security into five characteristics: Privacy and confidentiality, Integrity, Unimpaired service, Consistency and controlling access [Spafford, 1989].

Privacy was one of the first major issues to arouse public interest. Major computer privacy laws were introduced in the 1970s [Hernandez, 1987] however, since then the issue of privacy has still remains a serious topic. One of the major concerns surrounding the invasion of privacy is the relatively simplistic method it takes to set up such a task. Once inside a system, (e.g.

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