While paying bills, you notice that there are some purchases totaling over a thousand dollars that you did not authorize. You also begin receiving bill statements for credit cards, and subscriptions that you never applied nor knew you had. This continues to happen over a period of time, until your credit and life are ruined. Guess what? Someone's got your social security number and address, and you've been had. You're a victim of criminal identity theft, and there's not much you can do about it.
As the world grows and technology and people develop, new times bring new crimes. Computer crime is a new phenomenon sweeping the world as well as our economy. It is a brand new paranoia that has people, companies, and now the government in hysterics. Computer crime, by definition is said to mean :.
committing an offense with criminal intent through the use of a computer as either the target, the tool, or both ( Dr. Eva Vincze).
Though simple, by definition, this new form of crime is extremely complex. It encompasses many acts such as hacking, fraud, identity theft, cyber porn, pirating, and cyber stalking, just to name a few. And these various cyber crimes fall into an elusive gray area of internet law that is neither fully nor partially covered by any existing comprehensive laws. Most things posted online can be covered with the first amendment - freedom of speech, which makes this new and dangerous terrain immensely difficult to monitor. Since cybercrime is a newly specialized field, growing in cyberlaws, a lot of development has to take place in terms of putting into place the relevant legal mechanism for controlling and preventing. This new act is broken into three main classes of criminal activity: (1) Unauthorized use of a computer, (2) Creating or releasing malicious computer programs, and (3) Harassment and stalking while in cyberspace. .
I was given the fortunate opportunity to interview a few people with concentrated areas of knowledge in or around the topic of computer crime.