Unfortunately, while the advent of the internet brought us many opportunities and benefits, there were many problems that arose at the same time. Along with the inconveniences that come with internet shopping such as the potential for the website to be a fraudulent place of business, the item being misrepresented, or other third party individuals that can steal your identity, there was a new wave of crime that came with it, computer crime. Computer crime refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network, where the computers may have played an instrumental part in the commission of the crime. Typical issues surrounding this type of crime have risen in popularity among thieves and con artists especially those surrounding hacking, copyright infringement, espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes.
The term computer crime encompasses a huge gamut of illegal activities. However, they are generally divided into two types of categories; crimes that target computer networks or computers directly and crimes done through computer networks or devices. Examples of the first are malware (malicious code) and computer viruses, and examples of the latter include cyber stalking, fraud and identity theft, phishing scams, and information warfare.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-06/08/content_9948762.htm
This type of crime has grown significantly in China over the past few years. According to a white paper titled "The internet in China", online fraud, online theft, and other forms of crimes are increasing rapidly. Crimes such as disseminating obscenity, pornography and gambling are also of much concern in this country. In fact, It is one of the countries suffering the most from hacking. What is ironic however, is that there is also a considerable amount of crime that is performed from hackers in other countries using Chinese IP addresses. The paper states that 42,000 websites were distorted by hackers, and 18 million Chinese computers were infected by the Conficker virus every month.
It is truly sad and outrageous to see this trend going on in many parts of the world today. For many companies in many industries, this presents substantial amount of expenditures in technology to prevent hackers from committing these crimes. In fact, this is a repetitive and continuous investment within the banking industry as they need to always be up to date with the latest security software particularly to protect their online webpages. In the future, this is only going to continue to grow and therefore we must be careful with how we secure our personal information.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A major issue affecting the internet is cybercrime. As Susette stated, and I agree entirely, this is a problem that could conceivably continue to grow. Conceptually, to secure personal information is expensive. For example, Cisco Systems is a major provider of card payment industry security solutions. Some of the services they provide to the payment card industry can be seen by accessing this link. What they provide is extremely extensive and effective but the cost is not free. Any company that seeks their services must pay for them. Nevertheless, to not secure is even more expensive. According to an article in Directors & Trustees Digest, which can be accessed via this link, once a credit card or debit card has been compromised, it has to be reissued. The reissuance of a debit card costs between $10 and $20 per card. In an example that I discuss in my weekly blog, which can be read via this link, a record 45.6 million account numbers were compromised. To replace these cards would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. As Susette stated, this has become a global problem and all major global organizations need to begin to apprehend these hackers before they destroy the integrity of both e-commerce and the Internet.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Banks Bear Big Costs of Merchant Data Breaches, ACB Survey Finds
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1255080851&sid=2&Fmt=6&clientId=20175&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Cisco Payment Card Industry Compliance Services
http://www.ciscocertified.info/web/strategy/docs/finance/datasheet_c78-569995_v1.pdf
Last week [6/2] on viaThread I covered cyberattacks.
ReplyDeleteBut I was unable to mention how much money groups pay for cyber crimes. An article I read mentioned that access to a bank account pays USD$10-$1000 while a single credit card or social security number can fetch between USD$1-$35.
The worst part is ,as susy and andrew mentioned, that cyber crimes continue to grow. While we find new ways to protect ourselves thief's find a way to find our valuable personal information
Yes, I’m also agree that this is a problem that can conceivably grow because it is not rare to hear that someone had any of his accounts involve in a fraud activity more than once because I believe that has being increase in the past 2 year since the economy instability. Now, the use of the internet to shop online is more sensible because someone can get our information and use to charge large amounts of money. In my Global Finance we studied how companies spend lots of money to make the online bank if more secure and they make their clients feel more comfortable while they are in the website. Today customers are using more online banking because they don’t have to go to the bank to make a transfer and you can also make payments and keep track of your balances.
ReplyDelete