Is the Fraud Act a Useful Tool in E-crime Prosecution - Dissertation Example

Even though in existence for more than four decades, the Thefts Acts of 1968 and 1978 were deemed archaic and hence inadequate, when dealing with crimes that were internet based, as they failed they to check the increasing number of e-crimes. It is for this reason the Fraud Act 2006 was legislated, which purportedly had a large scope for prosecuting e- crimes under the purview of general offences, and including modern e-crimes, like phishing, while also increasing imprisonment terms. In this context, the paper seeks to examine and analyse whether the Fraud Act 2006, in reality, is an effective tool in terms of prosecuting cases of e-crimes.

1 Introduction 1.1 Background study The 21st century has seen the rapid use of Internet in UK (and elsewhere), primarily owing to the easy availability of computers (especially laptops), high-speed browsers and fast connectivity through broadband. This is evident in a survey report, which showed that in 1996 around 3.4 million adults were using the internet in UK, which by the next 10 years had expanded to a figure of 28.5 million internet users (8 times more).1 This rapid creation of an internet-based society has increased the information sphere available to users while also changing the very nature of communication between individuals within cyberspace, which started reflecting to some extent in the actual physical world.

Despite many benefits, widespread use of Internet has revealed a negative side, related to crime and criminal activities. Internet being a mode of personal and financial transaction, which is highly reliant on net-based interactions that take place through computers, without the people interacting ever coming face-to-face, which increases risk during interactions, especially in cases of financial transactions. The various activities that take place within the cyberspace attracts different kinds of people, and it is relatively ease for criminals to identify similar minded people, form online communities, and carry on their criminal activities.

One major factor, which increases instances of cyber-crimes, is the promise of large-scale financial remuneration from a virtual crime. As the Post Note survey confirms “Information security experts suggest that the motives behind computer crime have changed… [and] is now increasingly financially motivated.”2 This change in motive has occurred mainly due to rise in e-commerce, where we find that with nearly 45% of internet users using some kind of a financial transaction via cyberspace, there has been increasing number of online credits/debit card frauds, attempts at extortion attempts, and phishing.

3 Another major factor that has helped to aggravate the problem of cybercrime is the anonymity that Internet offers. A criminal may hide his /her own identity behind spam mails, spoofed mails addresses, or even proxy servers and commit online frauds. There are available, different encryption technologies that allow users to mask their actual identities, and various forms of software, easily accessible, which allow users to remove all electronic activity