Short Essay on Cyber Crime – Cyber crime is the latest and perhaps the most complicated problem in the cyber world. The term “Cyber Crime” has nowhere been defined in any statute or Act passed or enacted by the Indian Parliament.
Any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrumentality, target or a means for perpetuating further crimes comes within the ambit of cyber crime.
It is rapidly evolving from simple e-mail mischief where offenders send obscene e-mail, to more serious offences like theft of information, e-mail bombing to crashing servers etc.
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The types of cyber crimes include pornography, cyber fraud, defamation, cyber stalking, harassment, IPR theft, data hostage, money laundering, phishing, e-mail bombing, cyber war, illegal EFT.
Cyber crime is different and more heinous than conventional crime as in cyber crime; the crime is committed in an electronic medium and here means read is not a requirement but is rather a general rule under the penal provisions of the Information Technology Act. The Indian Parliament considered it necessary to give effect to the resolution by which U.N.
General Assembly adopted Model Law on Electronic Commerce adopted by the United Nations Commission on Trade Law. As a consequence of which the Information Technology Act, 2000 was passed. This Act was a welcome step at a time when there was no legislation on this field. The Act has however during its application proved to be inadequate and there are certain loopholes in the Act.
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Cyber Crime in the Act is neither comprehensive nor exhaustive. The Information Technology Act has not dealt with cyber nuisance, cyber stalking, and cyber defamation and so on. Cases of spam, hacking, stalking and e-mail fraud are rampant although cyber crimes cells have been set-up in major cities. The problem is that most cases remain unreported due to lack of awareness.
Capacity of human mind is unfathomable. It is not possible to eliminate cyber crime from the cyber space. However, it is quite possible to check them.
The home user segment is the largest recipient of cyber attacks as they are less likely to have established security measures in place and therefore it is necessary that people should be made aware of their rights and duties.
Users must try and save any electronic information trail on their computers, use of anti-virus software, firewalls, use of intrusion detection system etc. and further making the application of the laws more stringent to check crime.