Internet Crimes - Essay Example

This paper seeks to delve into various aspects of internet crimes and how it impinges upon business and individuals. Given the kind of internet environment that corporate and individuals operate currently, it is seen that current levels of internet mandating needs to be strongly reinforced and different layers of security need to be laid for a practically sound system to be in place that could deal effectively with all kinds of entry into secure sites. One major internet invasion is hacking which is a kind of cyber trespass, or by the use of illegal crossover to the forbidden boundaries of cyber space, such that the predetermined rights of established owners of such cyberspace are transgressed. Another is spamming, the odious practice of sending unrequited e-mails, or messages through mobile phones, etc. It is seen that there are a number of antifraud and Cyber crime laws in the United States, prominent among which are the Electronic Communication Copyright Act, Electronic Communication Privacy Act, etc., and finally, Computer Frauds and Abuse Act, which seek, through legislative armaments to reinforce cyber laws. However, it needs to be said that, to a very large extent the efficacy of the local laws and prevalent customs determine the course of complaint institution and its final results to a very large measure indeed. The system needs to be ever vigilant so that no hacker would even contemplate transgressing the rights of ownership and usage of established cyber boundaries, or indulge in any other kind of illegitimate practice. (250 words) Internet Fraud All types of fraud scheme that is done by the Internet are called Internet fraud. For this purpose fraudsters use different facilities of the Internet e-mail, chat rooms, websites etc. There are different types of Internet frauds in the world. The common types of internet frauds are credit card related frauds, phishing, prize money, free travel offers, etc. There are many other Internet frauds which are discussed presently. Nowadays Internet and its usages are common. Large number of people uses Internet for different kinds of financial transactions. Online purchasing and e-business is very popular in this time. Fraudsters use this opportunity very well. So the number of Internet crimes like Internet frauds is increasing year by year. To show different Internet fraud rating in the year 2007 is given below. This report is published by NLC’s Fraud Center. It indicates the top ten Internet frauds in 2007. (2007 top 10 internet scams, (n.d)) From this it is crystal clear that the loss due to Internet fraud is very much. Internet users who had awareness about the Internet fraud will try to take precautions against this. Everyone can avoid the internet fraud and minimizing the consequence of the Internet fraud. For that people must take some precautions. Few tips for preventing Internet fraud are given below. 1. Check the identity of the dealer: - Before engaging into any type of transactions with unfamiliar people or charity, first check with the responsible agencies. Now many websites which provide information regarding the particular sellers are available. It will help to understand more about the particular seller or the charity. 2. Check the history of the dealer: - In normal case the handling of the Internet crimes is difficult if the seller or the charity and the customer are in different countries. So the best way is to check the history of the seller or the charity regarding how they handle the dispute. 3. Don’t believe promises related to money making: - Many scams work based on the term money. They know it is the easy way to capture any human being. So intelligent people never try to hear the word related to easy money making. 4. Understand the offer: - A valid seller or charity will inform their customers about the transaction details. Otherwise it may be a cheating. 5. Always have a rethinking before deciding a transaction with unfamiliar companies. 6. Do not respond to unsolicited emails: - Unsolicited e-mails may be fraud. Best way is delete those e-mails from the mail box. 7. Resist pressure: - Authorized sellers and charities will give much time to take decision. Frauds force the customer for taking the decisions faster. 8. Protect the personal information: - Don’t reveal the personal information like credit card or bank account details to others. In any case, before giving such details first check the reputation of the website. 9. Avoid dangerous downloads: - Before downloading check the given website and its trusworthiness. Sometime the file may be a virus carrier. 10. Pay the safest way: - Use safe methods for the online transactions. Credit card is a good method. Some other new technologies are also introduced. (Internet fraud, (n.d)). In this period many people are becoming victims of Internet fraud. In some cases identification of the fraud is done. For example in San Diego On March 6, 2000, a man pleaded guilty in the Southern District of California to mail/ wire fraud in connection with conduct of fraudulent scheme involving Internet sales that he never delivered. (Internet and telemarketing fraud, (n.d)) Junk email or Spam: Spams are large scale mail sent with the malicious intentions of blocking out genuine mail. Simply spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail. Its sender is a stranger. There may be a lot of things going around this spam. A major impact of the spam is that it may lead to strong sense of violation. Another impact is its economic cost. If the user downloads the spam he must pay money for the various related things of the Internet. If he decides to delete it from his computer it also needs time and effort. To set the spam filtering system in the firm they need additional resources. For that also money is essential. Spam makes difficulties in the ISP also. Users will complain to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) about the spam and stop to redirect the spam to their computer. It is very time-consuming and difficult. Moreover they spend their time to hear the complaints and questions from the customers about the spam. It also causes an interruption in the service of the ISP. It is difficult for all of their clients. Another important impact is IPS’s address hijacking. (Impact on recipient) United State of America is the number one spam relaying country in the world. 23.1 % of spam relaying is done from US. (Email threat trend report second quarter 2007, 2007, p.7). In this graph the x axis indicates the month and the y axis indicate the percentage of the spam in all global email. In the beginning of the graph it is nearly 70%. At the starting of the month April 2007, it is seen that spam mail as a percentage of all mail is just around 60% and after that has a slight increase and at the month June it is reached to 80 %. However, it is seen that the total spam % by June has shot up to nearly 90% of total mail, posing a serious threat to genuine internet users. Many technical tools based approaches are used for avoiding spasm. But none of them guarantees 100% security from the spam. Most popular way to avoid spam is filtering. Different types of filtering are there. 1) Source filtering and DNS trick: - It is the most efficient way. The basic functioning is blocking the message from objectionable source. Major source filtering method is DNS based block lists (DNSBL). Here the DNS makes a list of IP address which is undesirable. The DNSBL discard mails from those IP address. For including an IP address into the block lists some mechanical criteria are specified. Those addresses which come under these criteria are removed from the block lists. (Source filtering) (Technical responses to spam, 2003). Working method of a DNS trick is DNS manager has the power to block mails from specific networks. For that he can arrange a split horizon DNS. After that the requests from the blocked networks will be prevented from entering the network controlled by the DNS (Technical responses to spam, 2003, p.4). 2) Receipt-time filtering: - In this method check the reverse DNS (rDNS). If a host has no DNS the probability for spam is high. Many spams can be identified from its behavior. There are many technical defects in the spam mail. Greylistim is an effective way to avoid spam. By this method SMTP server does not receive any messages from any unknown IP address with an error code. Traffic shaping is another method. It locates in-between Internet and recipient system. (Receipt-time filtering) (Technical responses to spam, 2003). 3) Content Filtering: - A message containing message header and message body. In content filtering, filtering occurs in both header and the body. In header analysis check the characteristic pattern of the spam header. In body filtering check the string in the body. Bulk counting is another method to detect spam. Generally spam is bulk in size. Find the checksum of the incoming message and compare the same checksum messages. Most probably they are spam. Another method is finding the spammy behavior. Mails with unusual patter may be a spam. (Content filtering). (Technical responses to spam, 2003). 4) Hybrid Filtering: - In hybrid filtering many filtering techniques are applied in series. 5) Sender Identification: - By this method identify whether the mail is from good senders or not and to exclude good mails from filtering. In this method check the user address, sender signature, sender reputation service, challenges and response and designated sender. (Sender identification). (Technical responses to spam, 2003). Legal protection: Currently United State of America has no specific Federal Laws for protecting against cyber crimes. Wire Fraud statute: - In US under Section 18USC 1343, any electrical communication signals crosses the state for fraud purposes is against the law. So any type of wire transfer which is planned for fraud purpose is punishable by this law. Mail Fraud statue: - Under Section 18USC 1341 whatever thing sending through US Mail System for fraud purpose is illegal. Imprisonment for 5 years and fine of $250,000 are punishment for wired fraud and mail fraud.(Federal bureau of investigation Tampa division, (n.d)). It is now necessary to study in detail another kind of internet crime that has assumed center stage in recent years and that is the menace of spamming. Spamming: The odious practice of sending unrequited e-mails, or messages through mobile phones and other communication systems are called spamming, and the people who indulge in this controversial practice are called spammers. The salient difficulties about spamming is that it is often complicated to draw forth the sources of spamming, and thus spammers relax in a false sense of freedom and security, thinking that their deeds may not be discovered, or legally proceeded against. It is necessary that robust and efficient laws need to be enforced in order to provide speedy justice against all kinds of spamming. If allowed to grow unchecked, spamming could be a serious menace to internet business and could dramatically slow down the pace of development in this area It is often seen that there often occurs appearances of pop-up messages which do not move out even after providing deletion commands. This could be a type of spamming in which the spammer does not wish the surfer to gain access to genuine sites. Again, often bulk unsolicited mail may appear in one’s email for all kinds of hoaxes and fraudulent schemes including requests from banks to pass on your Access Code and PIN for bonanzas in form of gifts and foreign tours. These are also kind of spamming. However, not all kind of unsolicited mail could be dubbed as spam. If a friend’s friend sends you a business or personal mail it may be unsolicited mail, but is definitely not spam. How could spamming be controlled or reduced: World wide standards for robust e-commerce business need to be enforced. Seeking permission before sending bulk e-mails to individuals and companies may be useful and needs to be tested for its effectiveness. Effective blocking of e-mail transmission in case of permission denial could mitigate spam. This it is seen that when a recipient gets E-mail from strangers. embedded software requires the initiator to perform a specified task, like fill a form, etc. If the mail is junk, there would be no answering. (Jesdanun, 2009). Thus it is necessary that the subscriber community and practicing software professionals need to conduct brainstorming sessions to find ways and means to arrest the burgeoning menace of spamming and restore coherence in online transactions. The main idea behind spamming is spawned by illegal or devious methods in order to divert internet business traffic away from genuinely intended websites to spurious sites that are intended to lower the value and business of bona fide sites. The main reason why spamming is illegal is that it is injurious to online business. Further, it is not easily detectable and thus passes off as genuine, much to the later consternation of web users who have been deceived by it. Since remedial measures are tedious and long drawn, and may involve court procedures, most spammers feel they could easily get away with their crimes. Another aspect regarding online business is that, in the absence of personal contacts among transactors, the relations are based on mutual trust. Spamming, to a very large extent, removes the trust in online. Again, the illegal practices of a few may cause damage to the community as a whole, and people would be sceptical to use even genuine size for fear of being defrauded by spammers. While the law needs to respect and uphold a person’s fundamental rights, it is also essential that this does not interfere, or cause detriment to the rights of others. It is seen that spamming creates more problems than it solves, and in the long run, does injure the online business since the discernment between genuine and fraudulent business often gets blurred and could deceive even alert visitors on the internet. For instance, certain business claims from banks requesting for customer’s ID numbers and access codes look so genuine, that one would be inclined to part with it at first glance, except for the fact that the customer were previously warned by their bankers not to part with any information over the internet since banks would never require such information online. The degree of harm that spamming could cause is evident from the numerous civil court cases that have emerged in this connection, and the damages to the aggrieved parties that have accrued resulting from the Courts’ decisions. The legal machinery has the unenviable task of balancing societal order with the individual rights of citizens. It is necessary to stop illegal intrusions especially in the online business. Thus it is necessary in public interest to step up the vigil against splogs, spam mail, hackers, etc. which significantly damage online business without provocation, or real necessity. Hacking: This could be termed as illegal crossover to the forbidden boundaries of cyber space such that the predetermined rights of established owners of such space are transgressed. The main functions of hackers are to cause harm to existing programs by gaining illegal entry into it. This could also envisage the misuse of credit card information (not the physical credit card itself) in order to gain monetary benefits. The name of the genuine card holder, PIN, address and its expiry date are sufficient to perpetrate crimes that could bring substantial illegal windfalls to the criminals. Digital extortion: Computer networks are easy prey for committing monetary crimes like blackmail and extortion. In one recent case, a group of German hackers compromised the system of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and gained personal information like credit card details of nearly 10,000 subscribers. They demanded $30,000 as hush money. (Wall, 2001, p.32). It is also possible through internet to make illegal interception of data and indulge in overhearing or overseeing carrying out of electronic transactions, and later using this information for personal gains. It is believed that in New York, two individuals used state-of-the-art scanners to capture around 80,000 cellular numbers of subscribers from motorists who traversed along their homes. It is possible that having cloning of these numbers could have resulted in $100,000 losses in unlawful telephone calls, had they not been arrested. (Wall, 2001, p.32). It is seen that there are a number of antifraud and Cyber crime laws in the United States and they are as follows: Wire Fraud Act Electronic Communication Copyright Act Electronic Communication Privacy Act Trade Secrets Act Digital Millenniums Copyrights Act Identity Theft and Assumptions Determination Act CAN-SPAM Act Computer Frauds and Abuse Act These are the broad spectrum laws that are intended to circumvent the flow of criminal activities concerning the internet abuses. However, it needs to be said that, to a very large extent the efficacy of the local laws and prevalent customs determine the course of complaint institution and its final results to a very large measure indeed. With the help of robust local laws and the co-operation of local police and law enforcement authorities, it is possible to remedy occurrences of cyber crimes. In this context, it is also necessary to understand that pre-emptive measures are equally important in that it could subvert and prevent internet crimes and fraud. It is a misnomer that internet crimes cannot be prevented until they have occurred and caused damages; with a strong and powerful surveillance system in place, along with the necessary training and cyber crime orientation to law enforcements and even ordinary people, it is possible to tackle the menace of internet fraud to a very large and successful extent. For this it is necessary that strong watchdog measures such as those taken by financial services authority or other competent persons need to be made. However, for the guidance of ordinary users, it is necessary that they bear heed for the following guidelines: Guidelines for detection and prevention of internet frauds and cyber crimes: Having previous knowledge of the person/institution one is dealing with, which to a very large extent, could restrict the transaction and assure that the dealings are with competent and legally valid sources. Assess, beforehand, the handling measures (if available) for dealing in the event of unlikely complaints and what systems and resources are available to handle it effectively. It needs to be seen that complaints may not always be successfully solved. In such an event what other measures are available One should be careful about sites which offer the prospects of earning quick bonanzas. In more cases than not, they are fraudsters. It is necessary to understand the entire offer, including the conditions in fine print, since very often, they constitute a large part of the deal One should be careful while committing oneself, or entering into contracts with dubious sites It is also necessary that one should guard against sites like winning lotteries, sweepstakes or windfalls, or seeking bank information or PIN numbers. Normally no banks seek information from customers through websites, but it is done through postal mail or other confidential methods. It is necessary that employees are well aware about how to avoid bogus offers and they need to understand their roles and responsibilities. (Internet fraud, (n.d)). Conclusions: It is seen that over the years the spectre of internet and cyber crimes have played havoc with genuine customers and have practically held internet to ransom. It is seen that the virtues of Internet, its transparency, accessibility and easy way of operations has been a perfect reason for invaders, hackers and other elements to wrought havoc and damages to the systems for personals gains. While it is necessary that individuals need to be circumspect and sceptical about protection of data, it is also necessary that institutions, government agencies, etc like Financial Services Authority, Internet Fraud watch need to offer and maintain institutional protection against powerful and influential scamsters and fraudsters who, not only have access to internets but also operate illegal schemes on a global scale. Therefore it is necessary that law enforcers need to unite to present a common force against such invaders that threaten the very existence and sustenance of genuine online business and wreck havoc on genuine business transactions through equally dubious intrusions. On their part, online subscribers and users need to discriminate, differentiate and distinguish between business requisitions that are genuinely intended, with those that subsist just to subvert and cause harm to online business for material gains. In the final analysis, it would make all the difference between costly indiscretions and judicious protection. The legal process and administration could only play a secondary part in the case of taking action against hackers, spammers and other unauthorised invaders of net privacy. The primary role of law is to seek compliance, but it is the moral duty and responsibility of users and citizens to ensure that such digressions do not occur in the first place. The system needs to be so strong, potent and robust that no hacker would even think of transgressing the rights of ownerships and usage of established cyber boundaries. Reference 1. Challenges of information technology management in the 21st century. (2000). Idea Group Inc (IGI). 552. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://books.google.co.in/books?id=8DVcV9Smk3oC&pg=PA552&dq=%22definition+of+spam%22&as_brr=3 2.Email threat trend report second quarter 2007: Graph 4-global spam levels. (2007). Alt- N Technologies. 7. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://www.altn.com/Literature/WhitePapers/Other/EmailThreatTrendReport-Q2-2007.pdf 3.Federal bureau of investigation Tampa division. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://tampa.fbi.gov/investprograms/internetfraud/internetfraud.htm 4.Internet and telemarketing fraud: what is the department of justice doing about internet fraud: auction and retail schemes online. (n.d). United States Department of Justice., Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/internet/#whatdoj 5..Internet fraud: Internet fraud tips from the national consumer league’s internet fraud watch. (n.d.). Fraud.org. Retrieved March 24, 2009from http://www.fraud.org/tips/internet/general.htm 6..Jesdanun, Anick. (2009). Anti-Spam Program raises backfire fears. Information Week. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300277 7.Technical responses to spam November 2003: DNS tricks. (2003). Taughannock Networks. 4. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://www.taugh.com/spamtech.pdf 8. Technical responses to spam November 2003: DNS tricks. (2003). Taughannock Networks. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://www.taugh.com/spamtech.pdf 9. Wall, David. (2001). Crime and the internet. Routledge. 32. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://books.google.com/books?id=2EbnSeS0OTgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Internet+crimes#PPA32,M1 10. 2007 top 10 internet scams. (n.d.). NCL’s Fraud Centre. Retrieved March 24, 2009, from http://www.fraud.org/internet/2007internet.pdf Read More