Computer Crime and its Effect

Computer Crime and its effect on the world

What is Computer Crime?

Computer crime is a new Problem in our society therefore we must know that what computer crime is. If we talk about computer crime we will refer to a crime which is conducted with the help of a computer and a network is involved in it. As we refer to computer it can even be a small computer device like mobile. And the network mainly used is an Internet connection because of its availability and access. Computer crime includes acts in which you use a computer or a network to harm someone else either by stealing data, plotting a virus, hacking someone’s computer etc.

Computer or cybercrime may include broader terms like hacking, copying of copyrighted material, child grooming, stealing and misuse of Confidential/private information of someone else , making a computer virus or a bug or a malware with a intention to plot at someone’s computer or a network in order to gain a benefit or to take revenge or another cause which make you do such an act is a computer crime. These are few types of computer crimes it is much more vast and expanded term.

Now if we talk about computer crimes conducted earlier or have started at first are, using someone else computer to scan or print what you want without consulting the owner or using someone else internet connection to distribute false information or conduct a fraud with the help of a computer or use false to information steal from someone else on the internet and use someone else internet name etc. these are all type of old computer crime. Now a days computer crime or new computer crime includes work like stealing some ones privacy, create a software or a tool to harm someone else computer and put the virus or malware in order to harm him in any case, use someone else email account to do mails eg to a mail to black mail someone etc.

Here we will discuss some details of the types of computer crime

Spam:

Sending many mails to people in order to conduct commercial benefits.

Fraud:

A dishonest way to make someone to do a loss which could make a profit for you in any case e.g. make a false webpage of a bank to retrieve information of account of someone.

Offensive contents:

Websites such as blogs publishing political, social or religious information which could be suitable for one sect or creed but is harmful for the other. Such is the case of facebook.

Harassment:

Mail individual or a particular group and make offence on the base of age, sex, cast, religion etc. These types of things are also done in chat rooms.

Malware and virus:

Creating tools to harm the computer of others.

Hacking:

Controlling computer of others stealing information and data or use it to conduct a crime etc.

Now we could use an example which could explain computer crime.

Melissa virus was speeded on March 26, 1999 it was spreader through email it was just an attachment it affect about 100,000 people throughout the world in the head it was written important message from user and in the body here is the document you asked and don’t share with any one. And when the user open the attachment Melissa virus come into his computer.

Effects of Computer Crime:

Now we will discuss effect of computer crime on our world. Due to computer crime there is loss of billions of dollar annually. Computer crime is increasing every day and it is creating big losses and company level and at individual level stock losses.

If we talk about computer crime it may be 15 $ at individual level but is very large at corporate level it can rise up to 225 billion $ so loss due to computer crime can be vary between 15 $ to 225 billion $.

United States is leading in cyber-attacks throughout the world about 35 % (approximately) in total of the whole world followed by South Korea 12 % of cyber-attacks of the whole world.

Hackers and cyber criminals reside or flourish in countries having few computer crime laws. From these countries they can easily attach rich countries.

Due to increasing Computer crime throughout the world insurance companies are providing insurance against computer crimes.

After an attach to a firm the firm losses its price of stock in the stock market by 1 % – 5 % therefore the companies suffer the loss at company level but the stock holders also bear the price due to decrease in the stock price.

A company suffers losses due to computer crime when a hacker steals confidential information and future plans of the company. And he simply sells the information to a competitor company and they use the information to get benefits.

Wastage of time is another problem because many IT personals spend a lot of time on handling harmful incidents which may be caused due to computer crimes. This time should be spend on the development. And if the company is attacked by a computer criminal it would cost a lot and much time is needed to recover from the loss.

One of the problem is that when a hacker enter in an organization and steals confidential information form the company the people who entrust the company loses their confidence in the company as the company may contains confidential information like credit cards of customers and as the information is stolen the customer will not trust the company again and will move to someone else who could protect their confidential information.

Computer crime reduces the productivity of a company as a company will take measure to reduce cybercrime so there will be more password entering or other acts this will take time to do and therefore will effect on the productivity.

Computer crime will increase the cost as to stop viruses and malware companies must buy strong security software to reduce the chances of attacks from such attacks.

In some cases victim of the cybercrime not even know that he has been attacked. And the attacker are so clever that they not even left a small clue to be detected.

When you use credit card at ha store the transitions are encrypted and sent to the internet and the internet is available globally. Hackers are smart and they can decrypt the information in a few time.

There are few solutions to keep safe from computer crime and they could be a little help for the attacks, antivirus and antispyware tools, firewalls, Cryptography. After theses cyber ethics and law has been formulated to stop these kinds of things. And after these the internet service providers must provide secured internet connections to keep the users safer from the cyber-attacks.

In the end I may conclude that computer crime is a strict criminal act and the it should be punished strictly and there should be strict laws against cyber criminals like there are should be punishment against them as there is punishment for other criminals who have committed crimes like stealing etc. computer crime cannot be stopped at this level but immunity can be used to keep safe from it or at least harm could be a lesser.

Some Examples:

On Monday 7th February 2000 yahoo website was attacked by mafia boy and was pinged at the rate of one GB/Sec.

On Tuesday 18th March Data thieves enter into computer of supermarket Hanford and sweetbay and stolen 4.2 million $ and debit card numbers.