Has the Growth of the Internet Created More Risk in Terms of Criminal - Essay Example

Internet and Risk in terms of Criminal Activities Introduction The internet is one of the contemporary aspectsin the daily lives of individuals. It is a very important tool to the living of people and this has many people relying on it for different purposes. There are people that rely on the internet to get information on the happenings of the political and economic settings. There are some people that depend on the internet as a source of education where they seek to discover and broaden their knowledge on particular topics. There are also people that visit the internet to socialize through the various social websites that exist. Having these much people in the internet is a major factor that offers a platform for criminal activities taking place in the internet. It is important to analyze whether the growth of the internet has brought in more risks with regard to activities deemed criminal over the internet. Background Cybercrime is a concept that has grown vastly over time. A major way to determine this is the number of pending court cases with issues revolving around cybercrime. Many young children have an internet connection in their homes. This is what has led to increased cybercrime. Over time, people have always shown interest in young innocent kids. This had led them to preying on them where they attempt to extort the children the least said. Many sexual predators pose as innocent and probably age appropriate people on the internet nowadays. However, these people are very old and are out there to commit several crimes on these children. Some of these people operate to an extent of setting up meetings with these children pretending to be age-mates. When they meet with these children, they have the audacity to kidnap them. Many are the times that they get to inflict physical harm on these innocent kids. Variables There are many variables that are applied in this case. One of the variables that are employed in this case involves the approach that involves uses and gratifications. The uses and gratifications approach defines the topic of study and relates personality to internet choice and usage very elaborately. It clearly states that the day to day requirements of an average human being are usually able to relate with the individual or communal characteristics. Another factor that can be found to explain the question is by the use of the five-factor personality model. It is known that character is a factor that can be used to portray certain hidden or undiscovered needs in a person. The model is used as a means of breaking down and understanding human characteristics in relation to internet. In the model, five different personality factors have come up. One of the factors is Extroversion. Through this, the people in this era are found to be very social and active thus creating an arena for cybercrime. Scholars in the field argue that the people that fall under this group find the media as a means of enhancing their social power as opposed to replacing their social life with it (Newburn, 2009, 67). Another factor is Neuroticism. This is where the people that fall under this group have a lot of tension and anxiety. These kinds of people were found to be involved with internet as a means of disposing off their anger and such related feelings. Another factor is that of agreeableness and conscientiousness. These kinds of people are found to be very trusting in nature and straightforward in all their relations. Moreover, they are self controlled and organized. The two traits are contrasted by psychoticism where the members are found to be selfish and less involving. These kinds of people are said to find the internet and other media as a form of escape from the reality and may even harm their fellow internet users. The other factor that is observed is that of openness. This is widely known as the ability to perceive and retain views and ideas. These kinds of people are known to be very social with others and curious about the developments in the media sector. They are also found to be very creative and with high levels of imagination. Sample A sample used in the research is that that involves real life survey. In the sample 346 undergraduates were taken and studied. In the study 52.9 of the participants were male. The largest population composing 86.4% of the people was found to be white people, around 7.4% of the people were found to be black. 48.4% of the people studied were taken to be between 18 and 20 years. The next largest composition was that of people between the ages of 21 to 23. They composed 42.5%. People above the age of twenty four made up for 9.1% of the people studied. Methods The methods used involve the application of the five factor personality method. The personality was studied and accessed through the Likert-type style. This was where all the five factors were tried on all the subjects and the accuracy of the information provided was rated against a total scale of 9. In the study, agreeableness was found to possess the highest rates 6.94 accuracy. Neuroticism was found to be the lowest in accuracy with its rate being 4.98. The participants were also instructed to pick any two websites that they preferred. They were instructed to rate the sites according to the frequency in which they visited it. 68% of the participants were able to rate their second most used site in general. In a range of 1 to 7, the participants were able to rate their most visited site at 4.39. The second most visited received an average rating of 3.92. The violent internet frequency was also investigated where the partakers were asked about the times they experienced cyber bullying. The answers were then multiplied by the period of time they used on the internet. Results of the Study The outcome of the study showed that when all values were put into place, the ratio was seen to have a significant effect from the frequency of visit. Most of the people that were found to possess the agreeableness trait portrayed less frequency. However, those that had a lot of openness had showed high levels of frequency. Neuroticism and agreeableness was different among most of the characters that showed the highest results for the most visited sites and was mostly found in the male sex (Newburn, 2009, 54). For the most visited sites, the ones that were characterized by high amounts of violence were those that were visted by people with less neurotic and less agreeable factors. The results direct to the conclusion that in the research, the results showed that the sex of the person involved was very important in determining the personality relationship to cybercrime. Among the factors that were noted not to play key roles were age and race. Theories and Acts Regarding Cybercrime Many countries has had numerous developments in the telecommunication and technological areas of operations in general. For the assurance of faster and better working in the related fields, these developments have been very imperative. However, with the cited developments, there are always problems associated. The government has tried its best to deal with the factors through different ways. A way through which it does this is by the enacting of different acts and laws. Examples of such laws is the Do not call implementation Act and the Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act. The Do not call implementation act is an act that was enacted by various governments in. It was important in that the Federal Communications Commission would be able to maintain the registry. The act came up due to several ethical issues that the society was going through and these were majorly caused by the growth of the internet and increased criminal activities. A reason for doing this was for preventing nagging telemarketers from making unwanted phone calls to ordinary people and this falls under the category of cybercrime or rather cyber bullying (Newburn, 2009, 89). Telemarketers had the habit of disturbing uninterested customers with phone calls advertising their products and this was to totally counter that. Making unnecessary phone calls is an ethical issue that the act countered. However, for the people enlisted in the registry, the organizations would still have the ability to create calls to the clients. The developments in the technology field that led to these issues were the introduction of open line telephoning. This method of telephoning was one that could enable people from different organization to make multiple phone calls from a given centre. Companies made phone calls in such a way that they could reach multiple clients at the same time with limited uses of time and resources. Rather than the former method of marketing that was known to occupy a lot of time due to manual making of phone calls. It is known that very many people do not like the idea of being disturbed my many phone calls. Hence it was obvious that they could not pick up anonymous calls (Newburn, 2009, 76). The development of the triangular method of searching for clients was one of the advancements that led to the introduction of the acts. This was because without the disclosure of sources of phone calls, many people made the phone calls. The next act to shed light on is the controlling the assault of non solicited pornography and marketing. This act was important in that it assisted the people from the sales and marketing of various unethical characters. Some of these issues involve pornography and related immorality. Most of the pornographic movies are spread through online media and other virtual media. However, most of the pornography that is in the networking sites comes through mail. Some people may not be interested in these pornographic images but are attacked or rather targeted by bloggers that have them. This is an issue that was not present in society a lot. However, with increase in technology and internet use, this issue has grown rampantly. One of the acts that stand for this is the CAN- SPAM act. The spam act identifies that people should not always be able to open and read unwelcoming messages from people. Many different people have varying intentions when using the internet. Some may be out there to look for money and commercialize networking while others may be out there just to make friends. For the ones that are out there to make money, they may sell different videos such as pornography to people though the internet by sending these links to them. The advent of technology that has seen the sending and receiving of emails between different people who are nations and continents apart has contributed to this. Many different people sell to individuals who are not aware of the products that they are buying despite their locations. The Java script technology is also another development that has led to the growth of ethical issues that subsequently made the law or act to be established. Through the Java script technology, people can be able to send encoded messages providing fake subjects and titles on the script of the document. After sending the titles, people innocently open them and then are shocked to find that the information that they had expected is completely different (Hopkins-Burke, 2009, 103). The act requires that anyone who uses the internet sends the messages through a closed relay and not an open one as they may go to different people. The new developments in technology have further strengthened the act in that people can be able to create suppression lists. It is from these lists that the favorites or the most common people that a person deals with are enlisted. The introduction of webcams is another development that led to the advancement of ethical issues. The webcams led to the viewing of products and even live pornographic material. The pornographic material is sent to numerous people as spam and other forms of texts. Some of the material may be sent to people with utter disregard for them and this was seen as seen as the invasion of people’s privacy (Hopkins-Burke, 2009, 119). The two acts are very imperative in the lives of the citizens. This is due to the fact that without the acts, many people would be victims of internet and cyber space technology. The technology has very many negatives despite the fact that the developments are meant to make the life of the citizens easier. Moreover, the acts assist in the eradication and flashing out of people who are involved in the space negativities. Conclusion The advent of technology is one thing that has affected the issue of crime in a negative manner. Despite the fact that it has some positivity such as assisting catch criminal through CCTV cameras, crime activities have increased through the internet. Many people have managed to install internet connections in their homes and offices. This means that wherever they are, they have the ability to access the internet and consequently have a chance of nagging and disturbing people on the internet. This has led to increased criminal activities generally. It is also imperative to have it that the various governments have a role to play in ensuring that this vice decreases if not stops. This is by imposing serious fines on the criminals caught. Bibliography Hopkins-Burke, R. (2009) An introduction to criminological theory (3rd ed.) Cullompton: Willian Publishing. Newburn, T. (2009) Key readings in Criminology, Cullompton, Willan publishing. Read More