OUR LADY OF THE PILLAR COLLEGE-SAN MANUEL INC

District 3, San Manuel Isabela

nuestrasenoradelpilar@gmail.com

Computer Crime: - The computer is a vital ingredient - the crime is underpinned by the
computer
- The computer is a peripheral tool – It assists the crime by is not an
absolute necessity.
Computer Crime:
 A further distinction can be made between crimes where the role of the computer is
purely incidental, and those where the computer is an essential part of the crime.
 Computer- assisted crimes – electronic versions of traditional crimes (fraud, forgery,
extortion, theft)
 Crimes that could not have been committed without a computer and which require some
degree of computer knowledge and expertise.
Types of Computer Crime:
 Theft: Goods, information or money
 Theft of computer time
 Computer espionage
 Forgery and piracy
 Harassment and sexuality related material
 Identity theft
 Computer Fraud
 Unauthorized access (hacking)
 Exemplar areas of computer crime
Theft of goods, information or money
 Theft of goods – diverting goods to the wrong destination.
 Theft of information – unauthorized tapping into data transmission lines or databases.
 Data diddling, swapping once piece of data for another, scavenging for stray data or
garbage, for clues that might unlock the secrets of a system or information that might be
used for criminal purposes.
 Theft of money – transferring payments to a bogus bank account, embezzlement of
fraudulent. appropriation of funds by a person to whom funds have been entrusted.
 Victims- banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies and other financial institutions.
 Salami- a technique that involves theft of tiny sums or money from thousands of accounts
depositing them into their own account.
Theft of computer time
 Involves the use of an employer’s computer resources for personal work.
 OUR LADY OF THE PILLAR COLLEGE-SAN MANUEL INC
District 3, San Manuel Isabela
nuestrasenoradelpilar@gmail.com

 Unauthorized use of computer resources is technically theft of processing and storage

power.
 Using company computers for financial gain, such as private consulting work, is
unethical, unless permitted by the employee’s employment contract.
Computer Fraud
 An employee posted message about the news, with a link to the fake site. People copied
and e-mailed the link, spreading the false information quickly causing the company stock
to rise more than 30%
 Web auction sites- some sellers did not send the items people paid for, or they sent
inferior goods that did not meet the online description. Dishonest sellers also engaged in
shill bidding (bidding one’s own goods to drive up the price).
 Extortion – hackers accessing systems to download databases, then contacting their
victims to offer security patches for their software in order to put things right again.
Corporate espionage
 It involves theft of corporate assets (information of interest to competitors, product
development plans, customers contact list, product specifications, manufacturing process
knowledge, strategic plans) or trade secrets from competitors.
Identity theft
 It involves not just the theft of credit card numbers, but also insurance or social security
numbers, banks account details, addresses and any other personal data that a person
might use to verify identity.
 Purpose- to form a fake identity or to impersonate someone usurping identity for
purposes of theft, fraud or other malicious activities.
Forgery and piracy
 Computer assist forgery to produce counterfeit money, fake cheques, passports, visas,
birth certificates, identity cards, degree certificates and corporate stationary, to name
others.
 Software piracy – distribution of illegal software and other intellectual products.
Harassment and sexually related material
 Computers have assisted a range of sexual crimes, from distribution of child pornography
via paedophile rings, to electronic forms of sexual harassment and cyber stalking (use of
email and other electronic media to harass or threaten a person repeatedly
Computer Criminals
 OUR LADY OF THE PILLAR COLLEGE-SAN MANUEL INC
District 3, San Manuel Isabela
nuestrasenoradelpilar@gmail.com

 Whizz kid with higly developed computer skills and a compulsive desire to beat the
system.
 Opportunistic employees or insiders from within the organization who had little in the
way of technical skills and were mostly first-time offenders _Hynds, 2002)
 Organized criminals working across national borders.
Motives:
 Financial gain
 Vengeance or grudges
 Intellectual challenge
 Can be done with a very little physical risk, crimes can be committed
anonymously (invisibility factor)
 Often appear not to be criminal acts – shuffling numbers around in a remote and
abstract way is not the same as handling huge of piles of money.
 Factors that contribute to the increase of the computer crimes
 Availability of the point and click interfaces
 Availability of software which can easily be downloaded from the internet and
used for criminal purposes
 General increase in computer literacy
 Computer crimes can be carried out from remote locations, like internet cafes,
mobile sites.
 Internet is above all networks, facilitates connections between like-minded
people.
 Computer crimes go completely undetected by accident.
 Many crimes are unreported.
Framework: ethical decision making
 Rational approach to decision making = (ethical theories + codes of conduct + social
norms + common sense)
 Ethical choices are not made with certainty; they are not deductive in the same way as
mathematical problems and solutions.
 Ethical decision are made through rational appeal to a number of principles.
Impartiality
 Even Handedness