The world has become more advanced in communication, especially after the invention of the internet. A key issue facing today's society is the increase in cybercrime or e-crimes (electronic crimes), another term for cybercrime. Thus, e-crimes pose threats to nations, organizations, and individuals across the globe. It has become widespread in many parts of the world, and millions of people are victims of e-crimes. Given the serious nature of e-crimes, its global nature, and implications, it is clear that there is a crucial need for a common understanding of such criminal activity internationally to deal with it effectively. This chapter covers the definitions, types, and intrusions of e-crimes. It has also focused on the laws against e-crimes in different countries. Cybersecurity and searching methods to get secured are also part of the study.
TopIntroduction
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the internet protocol suite to link billions of devices worldwide. Today, the Internet is one of the most important parts in daily life. The information technology revolution has brought two main functions with internet. On one hand it has contributed positive values to the world. While, on the other hand, it has produced many problems that threaten the order of the society and also produce a new wave of crime in the world.
The internet is used for different purposes depending on user requirements such as communication, research, education, financial transactions, threading, etc. The internet has become an environment, where the most lucrative and safest crimes are conducted. This research focuses on cybercrime or e-crimes (electronic crimes), another term for cybercrime. It refers to criminal activity that involves the internet, a computer or other electronic devices (Alex Roney Mathew, Aayad Al Hajj, and Khalil Al Ruqeishi, 2010).
E-crimes are increasing in frequency and causing extensive damage to governments, companies, society, and individual (Broadhurst R. & Grabosky P., 2005). Moreover, cyber criminals are motivated in various ways, including (but not limited to) financial gains, emotional instability, societal norms, and lack of legislation and punishment.
There are different names of e-crimes such as: the high-tech crimes, white collar crimes, and cybercrimes (Majid, 2012). Every year there is an increase of e-crimes due to the development of information technology and software changes (Rekouche, 2011). Thus, e-crimes have become very common and spread via various methods including malicious programs, which specially prepared to break through personal computers (PCs) or enterprise systems for copying confidential information or destroying systems. The most famous of these methods are Hacking, Phishing, Spamming, Cyber stalking, Cyber defamation, Cyber terrorism, and Malware (Bruce S. Schaeffer, Henfree Chan, Henry Chan, and Susan Ogulnick, 2009) (Bhanu Sahu, Neeraj Sahu, Swatantra Kumar Sahu, and Priya Sahu, 2013).
Consequently, the first step to secure the information and deny access to anyone is security programs. So many people and organizations have security programs to protect their software from the hackers (Bruce S. Schaeffer, Henfree Chan, Henry Chan, and Susan Ogulnick, 2009). Besides, many countries trying to enforce e-crime laws pose danger to the society and the individuals. This is because of the spread and development of information technology and the ease acquisition of electronic appliances.
The purpose of this study is to have an overall survey concerning cybercrimes, social media, cyberlaws and cyber security. It will also look at the e-crimes factors and the influence of factors that make e-crimes spreading in society. Specifically, it examines the following points:
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Researching and reviewing the most common types of e-crimes.
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Study the existing literatures on the factors influencing e-crime.
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Finding out the concerns of the society in using the Internet.
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Identify the factors influencing e-crime in the Society. Especially, influence of demography and technology over different types of e-crimes.
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Measurement and analysis of perceptions, experiences, and attitudes toward e-crimes.
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Determining the relationship between social media and e-crimes.
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Recommend the measures to reduce the e-crime by the policy makers and awareness programs so that cyber security is made certain.
The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the detailed study on cybercrimes. Section 3 highlights some of the common e-crime methods. Section 4 elaborates the factors of committing e-crimes. Cybercrimes in various countries are explored in Section 5. Section 6 discusses social media, cybercrimes and cyber laws. A survey of influencing factors towards e-crimes is given in Section 7. The issue of cyber security is considered in Section 8 whereas Section 9 concludes the chapter.