Essay: Impact Of Cyber Crimes On Human Life

Examples of data you could collect are:

Resource use (CPU/memory) of various applications, programs, algorithms etcetera

Number of comments to types of music, artists, or any other category on YouTube

Data pertaining to messages you receive on your social media site (gender/age of respondent, text length, topic of message, number of people online, number of “likes”)

Data from the e-mails you receive (size, topic, type of sender, your response (save, delete, read), time of day, date)

Data from successful mini-projects done by students in previous semesters will be used in class to illustrate topics and in the practicals. They also function as examples and may help you to come up with ideas for your mini-project. Obviously, doing something that has already done by somebody else will not score high with respect to originality.

The assignment is intended to be a mini-version of your final MSc project and its aim is to enable you to understand and appreciate what is required to produce a good investigative project.

To succeed in this assignment you should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of fundamental research methods including collecting, describing, summarising, visualising and analysing data. Also, you should be able to:

Formulate an investigative research question and to translate this into an appropriate set of hypotheses

Choose and correctly carry out suitable methods for collecting, tabulating, visualising, summarising and analysing data relevant to the research question

Describe the activities in a short but clearly written scientific report

As with CW1a, this part of the assignment may be done in pairs. If you do the course work with somebody else do not forget to put both names on the submission. Start thinking with your partner about what you would like to do and contact me to discuss the topic of your mini-project in case of any doubt.

Research Questions

The scientific methods attempting to investigate on a research issue provide appropriate results. The study presents research question and hypothesis on investigation on impact of cyber crimes on human life. In addition, the report deals with materials and methods used for the research. The investigation is achieved on the preventive methods of cyber crime. As cyber crime is increasing day by day, it becomes a great concern for the users to investigate on the particular issue. The process of investigation is collection of data from several applications, programs and algorithms. Moreover, it is important to use materials as well as methods through using data. From the investigation, provided results are discussed in the report.

• What are the factors involved with cyber crime?
• How cyber crime becomes a challenge for the users and IT professionals?
• What are the impacts of cyber crime on human life?
• What are the preventive methods can be taken for cyber crime?

H0 – There is no impact of cyber crimes on human life

H1:  There is impact of cyber crimes on human life

 Nowadays, cyber criminals are taking full benefits of anonymity, secrecy as well as interconnectedness that are given by internet (Lagaziet al. 2014). Thus, attacking the foundations of modern information society becomes common issues in internet service. Cyber crime involves botnets, computer viruses, cyber stalking, cyber terrorism, cyber pornography, Denial of Service attacks as well as hacktvism and identity theft along with malware and spam. Enforcement of law struggles in keeping the pace with the cyber criminals. In addition, police are attempting utilizing similar tools used by the cyber criminal in order to prevent the crimes.

Hall and Antonopoulos (2016) stated that the crimes related to computers and IT is generally known as cyber crimes. The theft on personal identity as well as financial resources and spread malicious code like computer viruses along with denial of services attacks on the computer networks and websites by hacker is included in cyber crime (Das and Nayak 2013). Cyber stalking is one of the medium through which sexual predators utilize internet chat rooms and social networking sites along with online venues for finding and harassing victims are done in cyber crimes.

Media reports also documents several methods through which criminals use internet for committing crimes (Summers et al. 2014). On the other hand, FBI has created special cyber crime division in order to address cyber crimes in coordinated as well as cohesive manner. Cyber crime has spawned the field of cyber criminology that can be defined as study of causation of crimes, which occur in cyberspace. However, it has an impact on physical space.

The concept of cyber security has come for increasing number of Internet users around the world. People are engaged with the online financial transactions process. In addition, the cyber crime team needs to confirm that the official crime term as criminals has started to be more aggressive over process over online as well as becoming threat for internet users (Amosun et al. 2016). The Social Media are therefore considered as one of the parts of life for having a major portion of internet users. Furthermore, there are almost every internet users who have one or more than one accounts in the different social media platforms. It results the risk factors of social Medias increased day by day.

Hypothesis

The opportunities of cyber crimes become staggering and increasing day by day. People are now using internet for shopping, communicating, bill paying and banking (Riek,et al. 2014). It is important to use the resources and common steps can minimize financial information that is stolen online. In order to avoid the scamps as well as threats, it is required to provide information to the users regarding cyber criminals. In addition, some of the varieties of cyber crime are ostensibly motivated through noble intensions like protest against these types of cyber crimes. In addition, cyber crimes often involve with posting of the comments on the official websites of the government and not motivated by desire for monetary. On contrary, different forms of cyber crimes have violent intent. It includes cyber stalking, cyber terrorism and cyber bullying.

Leukfeldt and Yar (2016) asserted that the economic impact of cyber crimes is beyond to have any disputes. Psychologists as well as psychiatrists assist the victims cope with falling out from identity theft and sexual abuse.  Cyber crime attacks are the foundations of technological societies and bound up for rapid flow of data that is facilitated through internet. Leukfeldt and Yar (2016) commented that cyber crimes have various impacts on society. It affects society in distinctive methods. Identity theft is one of the major impacts of cyber crime that has long lasting effects on human life. One of the general techniques scammers involve phishing, sending false emails that purpose to come from financial organization requesting for personal information. Cyber criminals attack on large and small business. Hackers are taking over the servers of company in order to steal information as well as utilize the machine for serving own purposes. It has been found that average expenditure of $8.9 million in every year are lost for lack of cyber securities.  

On the other hand, cyber security causes monetary loses. As the customers become wise to the traditional attacks, the cyber criminals have developed modern techniques that involve mobile devices as well as social networks in order to keep illicit gains flowing. Cyber crime has also impact on piracy related issues (Aiken et al. 2015). Anonymity, secrecy as well as interconnectedness are provided by internet. Hence, attacking the foundations o modern society of information engages botnets, viruses and cyber bullying and stalking.

In several situations, there are 80 % of cyber crimes originate in some of the activities. Cybercrime activities are diffused in global aspects and finically driven acts like computer relate frauds (Karali et al. 2015). The conspicuous portion of having cybercrime acts can be represented through computer content. It is including child pornography and content regarding offenses of terrorism as well as piracy. There are important portions of the crime are related to the acts against having confidentiality, integrity as well as accessibility of the computer systems. Moreover, it includes illegal the access to computer system that accounts for different acts. Hence, It is clear that the cyber crime is generally influenced through the national laws as well as by pressure along with efficiency of the local law enforcement.

Materials and Methods

Nain and Batra (2013) mentioned that several people have started to pay price after becoming victimized of the cyber crime in several of platforms of social media. In addition, many people terminate as well as deactivate social media account after having bad experiences. However, it is not the permanent solution to deactivate or terminate the particular account during minimizing risk of the cyber attack on the profiles of social media by making easy principles. Thus, it is required to determine the information for sharing. There are almost each of the social media platforms provide the option deciding the amount of information to share with the friends and different people on the particular network (Diamond and Bachmann 2015). Making the profile private and extremely public according to the requirements are needed for avoiding such security issues.

Concerning about the timing during adjustment of security settings, it is required to have convenient online alarm clock that people are utilizing in order to alert at several points. It generally comes in terms of waking up at vulnerable times of the night.  The online alarm ensures that the user is aware for the situation. Providing intuitive means for hearing the sounds are helpful go to overcome the security issues.

Hence, it is needed to customize the setting of security setting of the social media profile while configuring the account for first time as well as checking the setting in regular basis. Being very selective and careful for sending and accepting friend requests especially from the unknown people is required. In addition, being very careful during joining to any group over the social media platforms would be helpful for reduce the risks (Nain. and Batra 2013). Therefore, always trying to verify identity of the individuals before sending or accepting friend request is needed. Along with these, avoiding any requests from the people not known to you need to be rejected. Being very careful to provide much personal information at the time of joining any group requires avoiding for not being victimized with cyber crimes.

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that minimizing the threat of cyber attack requires awareness and conscious at the time of using social media platforms and other online process like transactions. It is possible to make sure that the security of personal data of social media platforms need minimal effort. Therefore, not sharing password with other people would be helpful for not victimized by cyber threats. Investigating on the topic would be helpful to understand the issues and overcome the situations. In addition, the hypothesis 1 has been justified for having adequate information regarding impacts of cyber crime on human life.

References:

Aiken, M., Mc Mahon, C., Haughton, C., O'Neill, L. and O'Carroll, E., 2016. A consideration of the social impact of cybercrime: examples from hacking, piracy, and child abuse material online. Contemporary Social Science, 11(4), pp.373-391.

Amosun, P.A., Ige, O.A. and Choo, K.K.R., 2015. Impact of a participatory cyber crime prevention programme on secondary school students’ attainment in crime prevention concepts in civic education and social studies. Education and Information Technologies, 20(3), pp.505-518.

Das, S. and Nayak, T., 2013. Impact of cyber crime: issues and challenges. International Journal of Engineering Sciences & Emerging Technologies, 6(2), pp.142-153.

Diamond, B. and Bachmann, M., 2015. Out of the Beta Phase: Obstacles, Challenges, and Promising Paths in the Study of Cyber Criminology 1. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 9(1), p.24.

Hall, A. and Antonopoulos, G.A., 2016. Introduction. In Fake Meds Online (pp. 1-17). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Karali, Y., Panda, S. and Panda, C.S., 2015. Analysis of cyber crime and its impact in India. International Journal of Management, IT and Engineering, 5(6), pp.119-127.

Lagazio, M., Sherif, N. and Cushman, M., 2014. A multi-level approach to understanding the impact of cyber crime on the financial sector. Computers & Security, 45, pp.58-74.

Leukfeldt, E.R. and Yar, M., 2016. Applying routine activity theory to cybercrime: A theoretical and empirical analysis. Deviant Behavior, 37(3), pp.263-280.

Nain, N. and Batra, S., 2013. Preliminary Study of Cyber Crime, its Impact and Remedial Acts in India. International journal of computer science and communication engineering, special issue, pp.223-227.

Riek, M., Bohme, R. and Moore, T., 2016. Measuring the influence of perceived cybercrime risk on online service avoidance. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 13(2), pp.261-273.

Riek, M., Böhme, R. and Moore, T., 2014, June. Understanding the influence of cybercrime risk on the e-service adoption of European Internet users. In Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS).

Summers, S., Schwarzenegger, C., Ege, G. and Young, F., 2014. The emergence of EU criminal law: cyber crime and the regulation of the information society. Bloomsbury Publishing.