The Dangers of CyberCrime

To what extent should the government be protecting the public from the dangers of the Internet? The Internet has revolutionized the way people live their lives around the globe. Aside from making much of the world’s information available to the average person, it has become a large force in the world economy. The number of global Internet users is growing by large amounts every day and criminals have taken notice. Because of this growth, computer-based crimes are increasing at a substantial rate and are targeting individual consumers. Computer crimes come in many forms but the majority of computer crime involves the theft and misuse of information to benefit the perpetrator. Identity theft is the fastest growing segment of computer crime but there are many others such as purchased merchandise that is never delivered, credit card fraud, and auction fraud. The government has the duty to track down these criminals and prosecute them for their crimes but many computer related crimes are challenging to prosecute because the criminals reside in foreign countries. In addition, the government’s reach on the Internet is limited because of freedom of speech laws, which prevents it from proactively monitoring and filtering the Internet. Citizens must protect themselves by using sound judgment when giving their information to people over the Internet, but the government must do more to raise awareness and educate children on safe methods of conducting business over the Internet and to what websites they provide their personal information.

The explosion of Internet users worldwide has been phenomenal over the last decade. According to internetworldstats.com, thirty percent of the world’s population uses the Internet over two billion users (...

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