Health and Criminal Justice Professionals - Coursework Example

The study of the boy who had a good cause using the internet does not differ much from a hacker, because both of them would probably be spending almost an entire day facing the computer and doing what challenges them the most. And on a general note, those people who have become too attached to social networking sites like Facebook, spend more time in front of the computer rather than interacting personally with friends and families or even neglecting responsibilities at home or school.

Policymakers must be able to properly identify the root cause of a person’s addiction to the internet. It may not necessarily be a disorder but the effect on the overall wellness of the person makes it appear to be so. I think that the laws or guidelines that should be made must focus more on the more controllable factors like the allowed time to use the internet or related things to that to be able to force those affected individuals to stop and live like any normal human being should. Since internet addiction at one point is seen as a disorder, counseling may also prove to be a good solution to understand why hackers and other “internet addicts” find more fulfillment in front of the computer than in the real world.

Cybercrime is no longer new, but authorities still have not created a single, specific profile that will easily determine a person to be a hacker or an identity thief over the internet.  The study by Nykodym, Taylor, and Viela (2005) discussed different approaches to profiling cyber-criminals and from a common person’s perspective, attempting to profile these types of criminals seems to be a waste of time. It is like trying to draw a person’s face when you have completely no idea who he or she is.

Given the fact that cyber-criminal is faceless, meaning we have no idea what they look like, all we know is that they spend so much of their time in front of a computer destroying and stealing data for reasons ranging from hate to simply enjoying a challenge. Trying to know their characteristics will be very difficult because it will put every individual as a suspect. Those we call “genius” cannot be prejudiced to have greater tendencies to become a cyber-criminal because these criminals do not need to have Ph.D. to be able to steal data. It can be implied that every individual who knows how to use a computer can be considered a possible cyber-criminal, or has the tendency of becoming one.

The psychological approach to controlling cybercrime still does not have enough evidence to identify the pattern with which cyber-criminals can be characterized. The challenge that profilers face is not just the individual, but the complexity of the crime scene in its entirety. The internet is not localized to one region, and these cyber-criminals that may be committing a crime in a particular region could be committing that crime a thousand miles from the scene itself. I think the profiling of the cyber-criminals still has a long way to go, or probably a different approach may have to be created or conceptualized to be able to limit the factors that have to be identified because the internet has connected the entire world in a manner that no single authority can handle.