Digital Forensic Crimes - Report Example

Full Paper Digital Forensic Crimes In the of Federal regulations (CFR), identity theft is defined as a fraud that is conducted by using the identity information of another person without permission. Identity theft can also contribute to other crimes. For instance, identify theft is successful in document fraud, bank fraud, immigration fraud and in the form of burglary and robbery. Consequently, the challenges for eliminating identity theft including victimization, offending and prosecution rates, needs to be considered by the congress, as these threats are arising by the contribution of identity theft and related crimes. Online privacy policy is of great concern, when considering identity theft as privacy policies of some websites does not satisfy the users for disclosing their personal data. There is no undertaking from the website owner for securing the contents provided by the user online. This is one area, which needs research and improvement, in order to provide a mechanism of securing data privacy, policies that are implemented by web services to ease privacy concerns associated with information related to their clients and adhere to legislative measures. Moreover, this also involves the undertaking for personal data usage including, what organizations would do or not with the personal information of their clients. This is crucial as some websites may sell personal information of their clients to cyber criminals or other competitors in terms of cash. This personal information is substantial for online cyber criminals to extract and guess passwords and retrieve credit card numbers, once they break into the email account of users. In order to eliminate identity theft appropriate measures are required. Identity theft is categorized into two domains i.e. Physical identity theft and Internet identity theft. Physical identity theft is related to breaking in to someone house and stealing documents containing personal information, bank details, and credit card numbers etc. Whereas, Internet identity theft has its weight age that is extremely high as cyber criminals rob millions of people and businesses only by a simple Internet connection. Computer Crime: Identity Theft Business suffer severe losses from data theft issues as in 2009 investigators related to data breach reported from Verizon business that crooks nabbed 285 million records. Peter Tippett, who is the author of the report and vice president of innovation and technology with Verizon Business, says that the report includes all the IP addresses associated with the account that are used in the thefts, and criminals are identified only because of in depth investigations by collaborative support of law enforcement agencies including FBI and Scotland Yard,. From this particular report, 90 security breaches were studied out of which 68 were reversed for further investigation to a specific IP address and location. The conclusions highlighted Eastern Europe as a common source followed by East Asia and North America (Larkin, 2009). Online data thefts occur when online businesses fail to protect their database by security breaches conducted by hackers or cyber criminals. The data including all the personal information of the customer is breached resulting in exposure of customer personal information and financial status. Social Network Sites SNS Threats A study was conducted to examine the perceived credibility of social network sites. The study included 252 college students that were involves in the survey based on extended use of social network sites, the perceived credibility of their class fellows on the sites and comparison of these sites to other online sites. The results demonstrated 88% of the sample visited the social networking sites at a regular basis. Whereas, two third of them stayed on the sites less than an hour. The study also illustrated that the class fellows perceived other members to be credible on a moderate level. Therefore, social networking sites turned out to be more credible as compared to chat rooms and blogs (Yeo & Windels, 2008). The impact of wrong identity on social networking sites has a high impact as majority of students and teenagers are addicted of cyber bullying. Impact of cyber bullying in society is immense as: “The woman linked to a fake MySpace profile of a 16-year-old boy created to start an Internet relationship with Megan Meier, the Missouri teen who hanged herself after receiving hurtful messages, is now believed to be the victim of a cyber-bullying impersonator herself” (MySpace mom linked to Missouri teens suicide being cyber-bullied herself). The action was taken due to threats associated with it. Probably the identity credibility is not on the optimal level for these social networking sites that is prompting questions to the United States department of defense. Kettering Animal Hospital Case Crime in terms of identity theft is vast as enormous cases are reported and the impact is high on the society along with the critical business losses. Several cases of identity theft conducted by individuals are highlighted. An employee in ‘kettering animal hospital’ made duplicate copies of credit cards of the customers. The nearby police station received several complaints from the same region related to abnormal activities and transaction associated with credit cards of those people who visited ‘kettering animal hospital’. Police caught the concerned employee for making duplicate copies of customer credit cards and paying rents for lavish hotel rooms, airline tickets and cosmetics from those credit cards (Whitcomb, 2009). Similarly, one more case related to identity theft was published in December 2007. A man was charged in an identity theft of many local citizens. He conducted simultaneous 19 counts of identity thefts as he accused the social security numbers and names of forty-nine people to gain credit cards (Ingersoll 2010). The police in New York caught one more severe incident and they named the crime as ‘Family identity theft business’ in which mom and the son both were operating the business of stealing identities. Tonia Cheeseman Case The stealing of identities was possible because the mother named as Tonia Cheeseman was working at the doctor’s office, where she has to manage patient files. Moreover, some of the identities were of dead people. Son named as Michael Cheeseman along with his mother named as Tonia Cheeseman were charged for three counts of identity thefts. Mother was charged for $ 400,000 bond or $ 140,000 cash and son was charged for $140,000 bail (and 2009). An incident related to physical data theft took place in Ohio in which the stolen device consists of information of 1.1 million people and businesses. The files on that stolen device contains names, social security number and the amount that is received by individuals on personal income tax returns for the year of 2005, 2006 and the current year (Willard, 2007). Business Losses Business suffer severe losses from data theft issues as in 2009 investigators related to data breach reported from Verizon business that crooks nabbed 285 million records. Peter Tippett, who is the author of the report and vice president of innovation and technology with Verizon Business, says that the report includes all the IP addresses associated with the account that are used in the thefts, and criminals are identified only because of in depth investigations by collaborative support of law enforcement agencies including FBI and Scotland Yard. From this particular report, 90 security breaches were studied out of which 68 were reversed for further investigation to a specific IP address and location. The conclusions highlighted Eastern Europe as a common source followed by East Asia and North America (Larkin 2009). References Larkin, E. (2009). Organized crime moves into data theft. PC World, 27(7), 33. MySpace mom linked to missouri teens suicide being cyber-bullied herself | fox news Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315684,00.html Whitcomb, R. (2009). Identity theft strikes ohio clinic, clients lose thousands. DVM: The Newsmagazine of Veterinary Medicine, 40(10), 12-12. Willard, D. J. (2007). Ohio data theft deepens: Stolen device has information on 1.1 million people and businesses. Akron Beacon Journal (OH). Yeo, J. K., & Windels, K. F. (2008). So you are hot, but can i trust you? Examining the perceived credibility of social networking web sites. American Academy of Advertising Conference Proceedings, , 291-292. Read More