Cyber crime is an aspect of the information age that has never been able to be fully eradicated or stopped, merely prevented and slowed down. Every year, there is an increased number of reports of cyber crime related cases, from a small credit fraud to a major bank heist. Over the years many different types of crime have occurred due to people infiltrating their way into confidential information and other people’s personal information. Some crimes that have made their way into today’s world are; hacking, fraud, spam, phishing, obscene or offensive comments, phone hacking, drug trafficking, cyber-terrorism and cyber-warfare. Despite cyber crime being a common thing among the information age there are ways in which they can be tackled. I will first explore three different cyber crimes and then three different cyber prevention methods or devices.
Drug Trafficking
Drug trafficking is widely regarded as the most serious of drug offences around the world in many countries. Although, sentencing often depends on the type of drug and its classification in the country into which it is being trafficked, and where the drugs are sold and how they are distributed. For example if the drugs are sold to underage people, then the penalties for trafficking may be harsher than in most other circumstances. There have been issues about having the death penalty for drug trafficking, including being framed with someone else putting drugs into another's luggage at airports. This can be a concern to people as not to leave luggage unattended.
Phishing
Phishing, as a general term, is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames and passwords, credit card details etc by masquerading as an honest and trustworthy source of electronic communications when they are in fact fake and untrue. Some forms of communication that are used to take peoples information include popular social web sites, auction sites and online payment processors. Phishing is typically carried out through the means of by e-mail spoofing and it commonly directs users to enter their bank details or personal information at a fake website that looks and feels as though it were a real website. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training and greater public awareness.
Phone Hacking
Phone hacking is a term used to describe the practice of intercepting telephone calls and voicemail messages by accessing the mobile phones messages without the consent of the phone's owner. The term was first raised during the “News International phone hacking scandal” in which it was alleged) that the British newspaper the “News of the World” had been involved in the interception of voicemail messages of the British Royal Family and many other public figures. Since the very early days of mobile phone technology mobiles have allowed users to access voicemail messages, but requiring the entry of a PIN to listen to the messages. As many mobile phones were supplied with a factory default PIN that was rarely changed by the owner, it was easy for a person who knew the phone number and the default PIN to access the voicemail messages.
Now that I have covered three different forms of crime and what they include, I shall now explain three different methods of crime prevention (but not necessarily to prevent the crimes stated above)
Finger Prints
Finger prints have been used for centuries, but with progressive degrees of success and how often it is used. Fingerprints collected at a crime scene, or on items of evidence from a crime, have been used in forensic science to identify suspects, victims and other persons who touched a surface. Fingerprint identification emerged as an important system within police agencies in the late 19th century when it became apparent that it was a more reliable method for identifying persons having a prior record, often under a false name, in a criminal record data base. Fingerprints are the fundamental tool for the identification of people with a criminal history in every police agency.
Advantage of Finger Prints:
-The finger print method is not very costly at all and offers a reasonably quick alternative to some other methods if an answer is needed straight away.
Disadvantage to Finger Prints:
-The outcome of the process often needs to be double checked due to the level of inaccuracy it poses.
Number Plate Recognition
Number plate recognition, also known as NPR, is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read license plates on vehicles. They are used by various police forces and as a method of electronic toll collection on pay-per-use roads and cataloging the movements of traffic or individuals. NPR can be used to store the images captured by the cameras as well as the text from the license plate along with some data base to store a photograph of the driver. Systems commonly use infrared lighting to allow the camera to take the picture at any time of the day. Concerns about these systems have centered on privacy fears of government tracking citizens' movements, misidentification, high error rates, and increased government spending. The NPR was invented in 1976 at the Police Scientific Development Branch in the UK. Early trial systems were deployed on the A1 road and at the Dartford Tunnel. The first arrest through detection of a stolen car was made in 1981
Advantage to Number Plate Recognition:
-The speed at which cars go does not affect the recognition of the cameras.
Disadvantage to Number Plate Recognition:
-Due to a civil rights law, pictures of the drivers are not allowed to be kept for references, only the number plates, information on the car etc.
Security Tags
Electronic article surveillance, usually shortened to EAS, is a technological method for preventing shoplifting from retail stores. Special tags are fixed to merchandise or books and the tags are removed or deactivated by the shop worker behind the counter when the item is properly bought. At the exits of the store, a detection system sounds an alarm to alert the staff when it senses active tags. A single EAS detector usually costs several thousand pounds. Disposable tags cost hardly anything and may have been embedded during manufacture. More sophisticated systems are available, which are more difficult to circumvent. These are much more expensive because of the use of more complex electronics and components. A major concern with these systems is when false alarms occur. This most often is due to tags on merchandise not being properly deactivated but also such as bringing in items from other stores and even other metal objects such as key rings.
Advantage of Security Tags:
-The sound that the security system emits is loud enough to be carried across almost all store sizes and so the employees can hear it and react to it immediately.
Disadvantage of Security Tags:
-The cost of installing the security systems are very costly and are prone to false alarms.
My Experience:
My experience of crime prevention devices and methods and cyber crime is very limited. The only knowledge I have of either of these things are from what has been shown on tv programmes or films. As time has gone by so has the means of how we store information on people and what we use to prevent crime, like how finger prints used to be done with ink but are more commonly done on small electronic devices; even though there are still many instances in which ink is used instead of an electronic device, but the end result will almost always be processed by a machine for maximum success and accuracy. However, when I have gone into some shops, the most common one being HMV, the security systems tend to under go many false alarms and need to be restarted again to stop the noise alarm.
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