The Role of the Internet and Crime - Essay Example

The personal information attracts criminals. Moreover, the internet is the fastest way for information transfer. It is very important for criminals. Also such types of criminal activity as computer viruses and malicious codes, cyber stalking and information warfare can damage our personal information. All these criminal activities are greatly influenced by the Internet, because it is the world of a great amount of information, in many cases unprotected information, and it is the place where the person can stay incognito (Johanna Granville).

Let’s take a closer look at how the Internet aids criminal activity. “Work-at-home” schemes. In this scheme, the victim finds a job opportunity or receive an e-mail from a fake company. The job is part-time and has a generous salary. The main “job” responsibilities are to rewrite articles or translate texts or to be a middleman for a charity organization that collects donations for victims of a natural disaster. Then the scammer asks the person for her personal information such as bank account numbers, Social Security number and date of birth.

As the fraudsters say all these personal information is needed for the hiring process, but in fact, with this information they can monitor the victim’s account balances. When a big amount of money appears, the fraudster drains the account. Drug trafficking is another example of the Internet influence on criminal activity. Cyberworld has become very popular among drug dealers. They use Internet cafes to arrange their deals and courier web sites to track the drugs. They even create chat rooms with restricted access in order to swap recipes for amphetamine.

One more example worth of remembering is changing information among terrorists through the Internet. They can easily plan their actions no matter where they are. It is better than the phone, because you can stay incognito longer and it is harder to find such kind of information. As the Internet is World Wide it allows planning a crime of a “world-scale” (Susan W. Brenner).Viruses, malicious codes and phishing attacks also play an important role in aiding this criminal (Burger, Ralph).

All these can be spread from one computer to another. These programs or viruses may harm a computer system’s data activity. Some of them may damage data files, others may destroy files. In such cases, work is stopped and companies then suffer losses.Let’s see the specific examples of how the Internet has aided criminal activity. In January 2000 a hacker Maxim stole the credit card information of over 300 000 users. He posted that information on a Web site under the title “The Maxus Credit Card Pipeline”.

Then this hacker demanded $100,000 from the Web site in order he destroyed the information. A group called Masters of Deception hacked and stole passwords from several telephone companies and several big credit agencies and two big universities. The damage was very huge. One company, Southwestern Bell lost over $370,000. In 2010 hackers infected over 13 million computers around the world. In that case, the virus infected more than half of the largest American companies and more than 40 major banks.

Work of those companies was paralyzed and the damage caused was extensive.As can be seen from all mentioned the most crime as robbery can be easily done with the help of computer and the Internet. It is only needed some personal information to enter the persons account. Drug trafficking is another crime that uses the Internet. With the help of the Internet, it’s become easily to spread drugs and harder to catch the dealers.The rapid development of information technology radically changed social life, has provided opportunities for international communication, business development and the economy.

Due to the deep dependence of society from the computer and information systems countries should organize protection from possible criminal offences in this field. Cybercrime has become a big problem for the world and the problem is growing rapidly.