Introduction to Cyber Crimes and Cyber Laws

Cyber-Crime Definition

The term cyber law is used to describe the law that deals with the issues related to technology and electronic components, the internet, and communicative devices, incorporates computers, programming, hardware, and data frameworks. In India cyber law is governed by the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Cyberlaw covers the streams of all the cyber-crimes such as theft, fraud, etc. As mentioned above all these are added in the IT Act, 2000. With the increasing speed of development of technology and widespread of the internet to every corner of the world, almost all the processes are now going through the IT platform, because of which there are higher risks of cyber-crimes in India.

Cybercrimes are broadly categorized into two different categories:

1. Use of a computer to target another computer- for eg. Virus attacks, hacking, etc.
2. Use of a computer to commit crimes from the same- for eg. Credit card frauds, cyber terrorism, etc.

Cybercrime has now become a profession and a typical cybercrime is changing rapidly, from one person to another person.

Computer crime is increasing more than ever

How big is the computer and high-tech crime problem? We can’t ever imagine knowing. But we do know how much these crimes cost the industry and society in billions of dollars every year. There is substantial evidence that tells us the increasing number of crimes and the increasing scope and complexities of such crimes. But if it is left unchallenged then it is a big threat to public health and safety, there many national defense systems that and totally dependent on a computer network.

Increasing opportunities on the internet

Criminals also know that the internet can provide new opportunities and multiplier benefits for eliciting business. The dark side on the internet does not only include fraud, theft, and pornography but also includes drug trafficking and criminal organizations that are more concerned about exploitation and which focus on hampering with the humankind. In the virtual world, as in the real world, most of the criminal activities start from an individual of involves small groups

The increasing number of victims

According to the latest survey, it was found that one in five online consumers have been victims of cyber-crime. Due to the increasing number of users, the numbers of victims have also been increasing rapidly.

Challenges faced in cybercrime

1. The scene of occurrence: in the traditional form of crimes the scene of the crime can be spotted and but there is no way that the scene of the offense can be identified in the case of cyber-crime.
2. Reporting to the police: there are many times that the victim does not even get to know that he/she is a victim of cyber-crime, because of the which there is a delay in reporting the crime due to which it becomes more difficult for the police to find out the person behind the crime executed.
3. The nature of the accused: it is very difficult for the police to identify the accused because he is a computer nerd and may not have the usual trait as a normal criminal of traditional crime.
4. Police are untrained: because it is a newly emerging line of crime the police are not trained to tackle such crime, but slowly and gradually there are now branches opening for specifically dealing with the case of cyber-crime.
5. Investigation: the method of investigation is also very different in comparison to the investigation of traditional crime. The investigation, in this case, has to be hi-tech and needs a lot of technical knowledge.
6. Evidence: the evidence in the cases of cyber-crime can be fiddled with very easily and are intangible in nature and can be violated easily.

Prevention strategies

• Hard prevention- in the sense of intrinsic features within the architecture, are the protocols and software that preclude, or render difficult actions of a criminal nature from being performed for example the use of a firewall. It consists mainly of making the internet infrastructure more secure and foolproof.
• Soft prevention- the measures which are other than the technological appliances, comprising mainly certain types of policies, the legal initiative, user guidance, manual approach towards preventing the entire network structure, some United and concerted efforts are being taken to avoid the occurrence of cyber-crime through mutual cooperation and effort.
• Educative solutions-  police and citizens or the consumers of the internet, can be educated upon the subject and given advice on the privacy and usage of the internet and how to prevent and what steps are to be taken as soon as they get to know about it. Moreover, there are also experts who can help in this regard.