COMMONLY DEFINED CYBERCRIME CATEGORIES

     Last week, we talked about some of the information on the most common Internet crimes that takes place on a regular basis. This week, we will talk about most commonly defined cybercrimes.

So what are they? If you haven’t already guessed, here are some.

In the world of technological advancement and the increasing dependence on the technology, cybercrime can occur anytime and anyplace. There are several methods that criminals use to commit a cybercrime. Cybercrime however depends on the skill-set and nature of the criminal. This should not be surprising: cybercrime is, after all, simply 'crime' with some sort of 'computer' or 'cyber' aspect. Most commonly defined cybercrimes are categorized into four types: The Computer as a Target, The Computer as an Instrument of a Crime, The Computer as Incidental to Crime, and Crimes Associated with the Prevalence of Computer.

The Computer as a Target: The offender uses the computer to obtain information or to damage operating programs in this nature of crime. Crimes related to the computer as a target include theft of intellectual property, theft of marketing information, stealing (personal, business, and the government) data by gaining the access to the owner’s computer. Accessing the confidential government records is another crime that targets the computer directly. Most concurrent examples of this crime that were see and hear about on a daily basis are manipulating the criminal history data of an individual, creating a fake legal documents, deleting the negative records from the tax and credit history and tampering and interfering with the proprietary information.

The Computer as the Instrumentality of the Crime: Computer as the Instrumentality of the Crime defines the criminal activities where the computer analytical processes are manipulated or tampered by the programs designed by the criminals. New programming codes are introduced to break the existing process and get access to the data. In this category, the processes of the computer facilitate the crime. Crimes in this category include fraudulent use of Debit/Credit cards and accounts, theft of money from accrual, money transfer tampering, credit card fraud, computer transactions and telecommunications fraud.

Computer is Incidental to Other Crimes: In incidentals, computers are only related to the criminal act but are not essential for the crime. In this scenario, crime can take place without the use of technology and even if it does, it only acts as a catalyst to the entire crime. It make the crime to occur at a faster pace, provides more information to the criminals and ultimately helps in concealing the identity of the criminal by making it difficult to identify the criminal. Changing a patient’s medication by hacking into the computer system is an example of a crime where computer has worked as an incidental than the crime itself.

Crimes Associated With the Prevalence of Computers: In the world of computation and technology, criminal activities are not only limited to the traditional crimes. Technological growth has invited the new series of criminal activities. Software piracy, distributions of software without permission, unlawful copy of the software are few examples of criminal activities that fall under this category. Common example of such crime can be seen on the third world countries where we find the huge trades of copyright software are being reproduced and sold on a daily basis. In international market, the price of the original computer software is reasonably high. In such countries, people depend on illegal software because of the high price. Software companies are losing a significant amount of money.

References

RCMC. (2014, December 14). Cybercrime: an overview of incidents and issues in Canada. Article and Photo Credit: Retrieved January 20, 2016, from Royal Canadial Mounted Police: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/cc-report-rapport-cc-eng.htm

Symantec Corporation. (2015, n.d-n.d). What is Cyber Crime. Retrieved January 20, 2016 from Symantec Corporation: http://us.norton.com/cybercrime-definition

Ngubeni, T. (2014, 14-November). Photo Credit: How cyber-crime-as-a-service stays alive. Retrieved January 20, 2016 from IT Web: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=139316

TOI. (2014, 28-December). Photo Credit: India logs 40 per cent annual increase in cyber crime cases. Retrieved January 20, 2016 from The Economic Times: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-12-28/news/57462649_1_cyber-crime-cyber-attack-cyber-space