Cyber-Crime and we

We have surrounded by technology very much and in our daily lives, we spend most of the time with technology whether it is on shopping or social media. Therefore it’s mainly about cyber crime and we. Many of the victims do not even know what they can do in order to get justice. Here are some Cyber-crimes which we all must be aware of. Whenever we are facing such issues we need to act quickly in order to prevent the crime to take its vast shape. IT Act 2000 helps us to get justice and make offender liable for his crime.

• Harassment via e-mails- Harassment through e-mails is not a new concept. It is very similar to harassing through letters.
Example:- There was a lady. Her former boyfriend was sending her emails constantly sometimes emotionally blackmailing her and also threatening her. This is a very common type of harassment via e-mails.

• Cyber-stalking- The Oxford dictionary defines stalking as “pursuing stealthily”. Cyber stalking involves following a person’s movements across the Internet by posting messages (sometimes threatening) on the bulletin boards frequented by the victim, entering the chat-rooms frequented by the victim, constantly bombarding the victim with emails etc.
Example:- A person sending friend requests on Facebook again and again or poking.

• Dissemination of obscene material/ Indecent exposure/ Pornography:- It may include the hosting of the web site containing these prohibited materials. Use of computers for producing these obscene materials. Downloading through the Internet, obscene materials. These obscene matters may cause harm to the mind of the adolescent and tend to deprave or corrupt their mind.
Example:- Two known cases of pornography are the Delhi Bal Bharati case and the Bombay case wherein two Swiss couple used to force the slum children for obscene photographs. The Mumbai police later arrested them.

• Defamation:- It is an act of imputing any person with the intent to lower the person in the estimation of the right-thinking members of society generally or to cause him to be shunned or avoided or to expose him to hatred, contempt or ridicule. Cyber defamation is not different from conventional defamation except the involvement of a virtual medium.
Example:- The mail account of Rohit was hacked and some emails were sent from his account to some of his batch-mates regarding his affair with a girl with intent to defame him.

• Unauthorized control/access over computer system:-This activity is commonly
referred to as hacking. The Indian law has however given a different connotation to the term hacking, so we will not use the term “unauthorized access” interchangeably with the term “hacking” to prevent confusion as the term used in the Act of 2000 is much wider than hacking.

• Email spoofing- A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, which misrepresents its origin. It shows it’s origin to be different from which actually it originates.
Example:- Recently spoofed emails were sent on the name of Mr Na. Vijayashankar (naavi.org), which contained a virus. Rajesh Manyar, a graduate student at Purdue University in Indiana, was arrested for threatening to detonate a nuclear device on the college campus. The alleged email was sent from the account of another student to the vice president for student services. However, the mail was traced to be sent from the account of Rajesh Manyar.

• Computer vandalism:-Vandalism means deliberately destroying or damaging property of another. Thus computer vandalism may include within its purview any kind of physical harm done to the computer of any person. These acts may take the form of the theft of a computer, some part of a computer or a peripheral attached to the computer or by physically damaging a computer or its peripherals.

• Intellectual Property crimes / Distribution of pirated software:- Intellectual property consists of a bundle of rights. Any unlawful act by which the owner is deprived completely or partially of his rights is an offence. The common form of IPR violation may be said to be software piracy, copyright infringement, trademark and service mark violation, theft of computer source code, etc.
Example:- The Hyderabad Court has in a landmark judgement has convicted three people and sentenced them to six months imprisonment and a fine of 50,000 each for unauthorized copying and selling of pirated software.

• Cyber terrorism against the government organization:-At this juncture a necessity may be felt that what is the need to distinguish between cyber terrorism and cyber torts. Both are dangerous acts. However, there is a compelling need to distinguish between both these acts. A cyber tort is generally a domestic issue, which may have international consequences, however cyber terrorism is a global concern, which has domestic as well as international consequences. The common form of these terrorist attacks on the Internet is by a distributed denial of service attacks, hate websites and hate emails, attacks on sensitive computer networks, etc. Technology savvy terrorists are using 512-bit encryption, which is next to impossible to decrypt.
Example:- Osama Bin Laden, the LTTE, attack on America’s army deployment system during the Iraq war.

• Trafficking:- Trafficking may assume different forms. It may be trafficking in drugs, human beings, arms weapons etc. These forms of trafficking are going unchecked because they are carried on under pseudonyms.
Example:- A racket was busted in Chennai where drugs were being sold under the pseudonym of honey.

• Fraud & Cheating:- Online fraud and cheating is one of the most lucrative businesses that are growing today in cyberspace. It may assume different forms.
Example:-Some of the cases of online fraud and cheating that have come to light are those pertaining to credit card crimes, contractual crimes, offering jobs, etc. Recently the Court of Metropolitan Magistrate Delhi (17) found guilty a 24-year-old engineer working in a call centre , of fraudulently gaining the details of Campa’s credit card and bought a television and a cordless phone from Sony website.

Research By Divya Smriti, Law Intern
Editing By Mahima Gupta https://digiinfomedia.online/author/mahima/