Cyber Criminology Exploring Internet Crimes and Criminal Behavior by K. Jaishankar Example For Students

Cyber Criminology: Exploring Internet Crimes and Criminal Behavior by K. Jaishankar Almost everyone everywhere in the world has either used or owned a computer. If there was an Internet connection, then they have all been connected together across that medium. But when you are just browsing the Internet or looking at your choice of social media site, did you know that you are getting attacked by some sort of malware or could be verbally assaulted by an individual? In Cyber Criminology: Exploring Internet Crimes and Criminal Behavior by K. Jaishankar, he describes all the ways people across the world are attacked everyday by some sort of malware or by an individual, such as a pedophile. Certain topics that will be discussed are subcultures in cyberspace, types of hackers/crackers, virtual sex offenders along with pedophiles, digital piracy, cyber victimization, and legal circumstances that occur when cyber crimes have been committed. We will dive deep into the secrets behind these attacks, the reasons for them, and statistics taken from researchers to show who commit s these crimes and why they did so. In the first section of Cyber Criminology, is the subject matter of individuals going away from acceptable standards of what one normal person would take and the subculture behind these people in cyberspace. The Internet is used for personal gains or destruction of others by people described as hackers, web criminals, and cyber fraudsters. One particular type of individuals who do this that were taken in a study are people from Nigeria, and are known by the name of yahooboys (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 4). Yahooboys consists of mainly young boys and girls whom use the Internet to partake in criminal activity (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 4). Some of the criminal activities they try to accomplish are scams, selling false goods or services, and hacking into people’s accounts and computers (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 4). As described by Jaishankar and Adeniran, â€Å"the yahooboys do all of these criminal activities as a cafà © culture† (Adeniran Jaishankar, 20 11, p. 4). Poverty is very high in Nigeria, so these yahooboys seek to spend their lives online in order to con or trick people in order to make an income for themselves so they can try to escape poverty in their country/village (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 4-5). The three main aspects that effect the growth and population of yahooboyism are the political government, the economics, and social factors of Nigeria (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 4-5). The political government in Nigeria is very corrupt, which makes it hard for the individuals who live there to make money for themselves in order to get out of poverty. The economics and social features fall hand in hand with the corrupted political government, for it is hard to get a country together and growing when the government is trying to overrun all the people with its power to become unstoppable. With the government being corrupted as it is, this would lead the people to think that â€Å"cafà © culture† would be acceptable and allows more and more people in Nigeria to join into this lifestyle of Internet hacking/scams (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 5-6). In order to fix this, the government needs to improve regulations on the Internet, they need to make special programs/activities for the youth to keep them off the Internet, and to give unemployment checks in order to make corruption and hacking unattractive (Adeniran Jaishankar, 2011, p. 11-12). One form of Internet crime does not involve hacking/cracking, but has to deal with people using the Internet to seek sexual contact with children. These people are known as child predators, or on the web they are known as â€Å"travelers† (Young Jaishankar, 2011, p. 53). Jaishankar and Young stated that the FBI states, â€Å"They open six new cases for child predators every week. There is an offender arrested everyday in the United States and most offenders are in the upper-income class and are law abiding citizens (except in this case of being accused of being a child predator)† (Young Jaishankar, 2011, p. 53-54). In a study of people convicted of being a child predator, the individuals did not have a criminal record or sexual history with children (Young Jaishankar, 2011, p.56). In this study, the following results were achieved: Clients ages ranged from 34-48, 58 percent were white-collar workers, 17 percent were blue-collar workers, 15 percent were unemployed, and 10 percent were on disability (Young Jaishankar, 2011, p. 56). The study showed that at the time of arrest of these child predators that the following information was obtained from them: 47 percent had depression or anxiety, 39 percent had alcoholism or drug dependence, 19 percent had a sex addiction, and 10 percent had a history of sexual abuse (Young Jaishankar, 2011, p. 56). With ch ild predators comes child pornography on the Internet. Child pornography is becoming more known and more wide spread on the Internet today for the fact that it is harder to catch who is putting up the pictures of the children and who is viewing them. Now they have these online communities where people can get on to talk about or to children in a sexual way and get away with it. They can get away with it for the fact that they have this â€Å"wall† of a computer screen to hide behind, and also these communities can say they are just pretend and it is all just a fantasy, not real life because users have to verify they are 18 years or older to be on the site (Young Jaishankar, 2011, p. 62). Thus it is becoming harder to convict many child predators online, unless they can get concrete evidence of them trying to meet a person under the age of 18 years. To go back and describe people using the Internet for their own personal and financial gains, the best members of this are known as â€Å"hackers† and â€Å"crackers.† The bad hackers are more known for being called crackers than hackers. Bad hackers see themselves as gifted people and do the things they do because they were bad people since they were children (Turgeman-Goldschmidt Jaishankar, 2011, p. 40-41). They do not always want to take something for someone, sometimes they just like to show off their computer hacking skills or do what the government won’t to some individuals (Turgeman-Goldschmidt Jaishankar, 2011, p. 41-42). Such as doing a denial of service attack to someone that is corrupt because the government will not do anything about it so they feel like they are doing a duty for the country. Some bad hackers are sometimes called phreaks or pirates. Phreaks are hackers who acquire someone else’s credit card number or they use technology to a void getting charged for long-distance calls (Turgeman-Goldschmidt Jaishankar, 2011, p. 32). Pirates are people who illegally acquire and distribute copyrighted software. The good hackers are known simply as hackers; at least they were when that was a job back a few years ago. The older/good hackers hacked into systems in order to see the weak points, then letting the company know so they can make their systems better for their users (Turgeman-Goldschmidt Jaishankar, 2011, p. 38-39). In a study of good hackers, the following information was obtained: Many were young, educated, single, earning above-average income, and where of either European or American origin (Turgeman-Goldschmidt Jaishankar, 2011, p.35). Not all good hackers did this as a job and a source of income, rather some of them did it as a hobby and for the greater good of others (Turgeman-Goldschmidt Jaishankar, 2011, p. 39). Tony Kushner: Angels In America EssayWhen you go back to the â€Å"big picture† of cyber crime, it truly affects everyone that has a computer and an Internet connection. Out of most of the individuals who get hacked, the most affected are banking and financial industries, where computers send and receive funds/business transactions daily (Choi Jaishankar, 2011, p.230). There would be more evidence and studies on how to help stop certain attacks, but most attacks go undetected or are not reported at all (Choi Jaishankar, 2011, p.230). Crimes on a computer can be separated into two different categories: cyber crime and computer crime. Cyber crime is a crime that involves computers and networks and does not rely solely on computers (Choi Jaishankar, 2011, p.230). Computer crime is when a hacker requires no special computer skills; they can go through either chat-rooms, MSN, or email. All they need to do is to gain your trust or trick you to get towards your valuable informat ion for their own personal gains (Choi Jaishankar, 2011, p.230). There is another subject of cyber crime which is similar to an online predator, but not quite in the same category. They are called Internet Stalkers, and are becoming more and more relevant with social media sites becoming more popular. But there is something called the Routine Activities Theory, in which three elements must be present in order for a crime to occur. The three elements are as follows: exposure to motivated offenders, a suitable target, and lack of capable guardianship, all of these are tested to see if children are safe online (Marcum Jaishankar, 2011, p.254). In most cases, the person is contacted with unwanted conversation, in which makes the individual uncomfortable and violated (Marcum Jaishankar, 2011, p.254). These Internet stalkers can also become Internet bullies and harass an individual for whatever reason they seek. With all of this going on for an individual, the victim may fear to go online again or to even go out in public if they feel their life is in danger. There has been an attempt to make cyber bullying and cyber stalking illegal under the Stalking and Domestic Violence Act that was initiated in Reno of the year 1999 (Pittaro Jaishankar, 2011, p.295). Hopefully in the future all people will stop with the cyber stalking and bullying since it is a form of harassment and can be punishable under law. The last section of Cyber Criminology writes of where cyber crimes are saw as a good thing for a person’s country. Then there is a part of human rights infringement in the new digital era of today. In Islam, they stated that cyber vandalism is religiously permitted because it can be used as a weapon against the enemy of Islam who are defaming Islam, the prophet Mohammad, and Muslims (Maghaireh Jaishankar, 2011, p.347). There have been websites created for the greater good of Islam in which they teach hacking techniques to Muslim youths (Maghaireh Jaishankar, 2011, p.356). Since Islam is supportive of Muslims using the Internet as a potential weapon, more and more Muslim youths commit cyber vandalism which is giving them a bad reputation on the Internet across the whole world (Maghaireh Jaishankar, 2011, p.356). With things like this and other cyber terrorism/crimes going on around the world, there are people who scope the Internet looking for potential law breakers. Advance s in information and communication technology have helped with the involvement of prevention and detection of crime either being committed or about to be committed (Smith Jaishankar, 2011, p.393). These new advancement have helped with investigations, prosecution, and the punishments of crimes to law breaking individuals from across the world (Smith Jaishankar, 2011, p.393). Some are asking whether this is an infringement to our human rights that they are invading our privacy in order to see if anyone is committing a crime. Many authorities use this technology to identify suspects and risks online, to present clear evidence in courtrooms, and to monitor offenders who are under home detention (Smith Jaishankar, 2011, p.394). What many people look at is that the ability of individuals to monitor their computer usage creates multiple human rights concerns, which include violation to their human freedom, freedom of thought and expression, and the main one is the right to privacy (Smi th Jaishankar, 2011, p.398). Many may be shown that whatever they put on the Internet is considered to be in the public domain and viewable by everyone, but what to be sought after in the future is whether what you search and look at should be able to be seen by others. In conclusion, Cyber Criminology: Exploring Internet Crimes and Criminal Behavior goes over many different aspects of what could possibly go wrong with law breakers and law abiding citizens on the Internet. Different things can happen to you or others on the Internet, such as criminal subcultures/hacking in cyberspace, child predators, digital piracy, and cyber stalking/bullying. All of these things make the Internet a scary and dangerous place to be for individuals. With that, I agree with what many associations, like the MPAA, RIAA, and NSA, are doing in order to try to make the Internet a safer place for people across the world. While some of it may be an invasion to privacy, in the end picture they are just trying to help make the real world and cyber world a safer place for everyone. This in which is the Act-Utilitarianism ethical way of thinking for wanting the greater good for all the people. Jaishankar goes over many different researches that have been done to see what type o f people commit what type of cyber crime and with many more researches like this, we can hopefully narrow down who might be the next criminal on the Internet before they even commit the crime. Everything that Jaishankar is going over in this book shows that you need to be careful online and never trust everything you see at first glance. The Internet can be a dark place with many criminals hiding behind screens, so whenever you suspect something is wrong, either get off the computer or alert the proper authorities so they can look into the matter. This way you can help yourself and others on the Internet and help it be a safer place against cyber criminals. Works Cited Young, K., Jaishankar, K. (2011). Cyber Criminology: Exploring Internet Crimes and Criminal Behavior. Boca Raton, Florida: Taylor Francis Group.