Cyber Crimes

The concept of internet came into existence in 1968 in form of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). It was developed by America’s Department of Defense commission and was basically invented as a military network of 40 computers. After a long period of 12 years it was then became network of 200 computers all over the world.

Slowly, then rapidly, hundreds and thousands, then millions, and now internet is most common, vastly spread network. In India the user growth is tremendous, as in 1999 it was in thousands and now became record breaking advancements of lakhs. The internet, not only used for work but also for fun, you can buy and play, do meetings and chatting, viewing and surfing, everything is possible in the world of cyber space.

But every coin has two faces and internet too has. The other side is full of crimes. But the question arise what is a cyber crime?

Cyber crime is a term given to the crimes which are directly or indirectly concerned with the cyber world. These are basically divided into 3 major categories that are cyber crimes against person, property and government.

The main cyber crimes are:

1)       Sexual crimes

a.        Pornography and child pornography, Sexual harassment spreading of sexual material

b.       Call girls, call boys and male n’ female striptease availability on net

c.        Sex chatting

2)       Mail account hacking

3)       Spreading viruses via net

4)       Breaking private of official sites

5)       Blackmailing through e-mails

6)       Internet gambling

7)       Software piracy

1. Sexual crimes:
   1. Pornography and child pornography: These are two different terms but are interlinked. Pornography means exposure of porn pictures of women or men via any medium like mails, websites, and cds etc . It is a well known adult pleasure material.

                                                               i.      According to physiologists, over exposure of porno material especially through cd’s tha are easily available in market (these cd’s contain the sexual material and called “xxx-rated”, “bfs”, “123”, “abc” etc and are very esily available even for teenagers and under aged children) may lead to a type of addiction may be called as porno addiction. This leads to lessening of ability to concentrate on work and may lead to chronic depression as the addict has the guilt of doing wrong.

                                                              ii.      Child pornography includes the interference of children or teenagers in spreading the harassing material. Some adults commonly known as pedophiles (who introduce themselves as teenagers) are responsible for pulling teenagers in this quick sand.

                                                            iii.      Firstly they take the teenagers in their confidence and then send their porno photographs to them. The undeveloped mind of the teenagers accept this by “every one do this then what is wrong if I do this also” and go into the trap of this sweet poison. Then after the pedophiles either ask for photographs of the person they are talking to(and everyone knows what can be done with the photographs),or ask the to meet or even encourages them to establish physical contact with themselves and here the real problems starts with the forthcoming lessons of blackmailing, kidnapping and all the worst.

                                                            iv.      Some time ago a student was arrested for building a porno site including photographs of his own classmate and the first case of cyber crimes in India was of an engineer who harassed his own colleague’s wife.

2. Call girls, call boys, and male n’ female striptease availability on net: the call girls, call boys and male n’ female striptease system has acquired net as there first preference as it is very easy to contact the needy!
3. Sex chatting: This is a hell for the undeveloped minds. The user rooms especially are full of those people who are interested in sec chat. Sex chat is done by exchanging thoughts and pretend do be near each other and creates a problem for children who do this and make a wrong thinking about the most sensitiove topic in human life that is sex.
1. Mail account hacking: Sabeer Bhatia with his friend, has given a jewel to the cyber world in form of e-mail. Less posting charges, free mail accounts, thousands of mail supports etc are common features of present e-mail system. But as said there always exist two faces of a coin. The other face of the system is hacking of one’s personal account. This results in mental as well as financial problems as sometimes confidential letters are hacked and sold further by these hack-criminals.
2. Virus spreading: The computer virus is a type of program which enters in our system without our permission and affects the system partially or as a whole. The different kinds of viruses have different effects. Some only slow down the system where as others crash the system. The famous of them are “I love you”, “win.98.iso”, “Britney spears” etc. the main stream of spreading these viruses is internet especially through e-mails and porn sites as traffic of these sites is unfortunately very high. The best way to get rid of these e-mail bugs is to avoid unknown mails especially with attachments. Although the governments of different countries are trying to stop the virus spreading but every day thousands of new viruses take birth in someone’s mind or in the net world.
3. Site hacking: This is called a problem. Unwanted pop-ups, account breaking, virus attachments and what we get are endless problems. The site hacking is the process which is undergone by some master mind s in which they capture the source files and alter them accordingly to their desires. The alterations may include foul word to pornography, porno links, virus attachment or even unavailability of important source material. The main problem is with the official sites especially of defense which if hacked can cause a long-term damage to whole defense system of a country and affect the goodwill of developed as well as developing countries. Unfortunately there are thousands of sites which teach hacking but only a hundreds of them which teaches protective measures to prevent hacking.
4. Blackmailing through e-mails: Suppose you have a friend on net. He/she asks for your photograph, phone no, or address and you give it to your friend. The problem has started now. Now he/she can do anything with you like blackmail you on any secrete which you told or do some miraculous things with your photograph and demand money for not showing it to your family or to society.

6. Internet Gambling: This is another adverse effect of internet surfing for a person who want to make fast money n to a extend for the children also as they find a sort of fun in gambling. The sites like gambleonline.com etc are making the pockets empty while being behind the walls. The only thing is they need the credit card no. and they will surly make u bankrupt!

7. Piracy: The last but most dangerous aspect of cyber crimes id piracy. Piracy means making illegal copies of software, movies, song cds etc. the only thing I can say is that knowingly or unknowingly we all are promoting piracy. The international software market undergone a loss of 33600 crores due to software piracy and our India film industry is sinking day by day due to pirated cd’s that are available even next day of the release of the movie and all of us prefer to see the movie at home instead of going to theaters.

The steps what we can take is to avoid these types of crimes and make the world of cyber space a happy and prosperous world instead of making it a problem for our forthcoming generation so that they may not sink in the hell of bad environment are:

1.        There is a need to teach the teenagers about the true aspects of life like of sex.

2.        There is need of making the cyber laws more strong so that the guilty must be given the right punishment.

3.        The internet café or internet dhaba’s owners should use internet filters for stopping the viewing of the porn sites.

4.        The schools, colleges and computer centers like CMC(govt. authorized), Aptech etc should organize camps to make people aware of cyber crimes and laws.

5.        A separate column should be there in news papers and magazines that publish material concerning computers and internet.

SOME TIPS FOR CHATTING IN HOPE OF A BETTER SURF:

1.        Don’t ever give your photograph or address to anyone.

2.       Don’t make your profile available for everyone.

3.       Don’t fix any meet with your net friends without parent permission.

4.       Keep on changing your password occasionally for avoiding account hacking.

5.       Don’t give your password to strangers.

6.       E-mail facility providers like yahoo don’t ask for the passwords by any means so don’t reply the yahoo letters which ask your passwords.

Anurag Bhateja