Types and Fighting of Cyber Crimes - Research Paper Example

Broadhust and Grabosky (2005) in their book defined cybercrime as a “specific category of computer crime, which refers to the use of computers as a tool for crime commission” (p. 197). Cyber crimes have created attention in various national capitals.

According to Great Britain: homeHome Office (2010), “the challenge posed by crimes initiated or committed through the online environment is not so much their identification as the nature of the environment in which they are committed (p. 9). Balkin and Information Society Project (2007) in their book wrote that “cybercrime has the basic characteristics of traditional crime, but it is not territorially based” (p. 218). Unlike crime, cybercrime can easily transcend national boundaries. The laws governing cyber crimes in several countries are unenforceable due to the lack of a means of protection that businesses and governments can rely on, in place they have relied on technical measures to protect themselves from those criminals who would deny access to specific information, steal or even destroy valuable information.

Types of Cyber crimes come in three categories: cyber crimes against a person, property, or government. Cyber crimes committed against a person include crimes like harassing an individual via email, posting, distributing, or disseminating materials such as pornography, and having indecent exposure. This type of crime possesses a serious threat to the younger generation and may cause scars that are irreparable to the young if it is not prevented. While crimes such as vandalism of computers and transmission of programs that are harmful like viruses, fall under cyber crimes against property.

Cyber crimes against property often take place in organizations. For instance, an engineering company may decide to steal another company’s database by using a spy. The other is that cyber crimes against governments come about when an individual or even a group of people threatens the international government with terrorists and its citizens. An example of his type of crime is when an individual cracks a website containing important government information. Cracking is also a cybercrime that has become common; it gives a person a dreadful feeling knowing that someone broke into their computer without the owner’s knowledge.

 Self-protection has not been sufficient in preventing cyberspace. There should be an international rule of law that has to be enforced because some countries where there is inadequate legal protection against cyber crimes run a substantial risk of having their messages blocked by the network. Cyber crimes can be enhanced by the examination of statutes of the national government to ensure they are sufficient and able to combat any cybercrime that may be committed. Kshetri (2010) states that “new cybercrime laws have increased the government’s formal authority in industrialized countries, whiles many developing countries have no laws dealing with cyber crimes” (p. 103)). This means that governments from some developing countries want to fight against cybercrime and lack a framework for regulation but can draw examples from these industrialized countries on how they have tried to combat cybercrimes and try to implement them.