Cybercrime has proliferated with the Internet. One of the first waves of cyber crime originates in Nigeria, coming in the form of scam letters. There are many examples of this, but it has been so prevalent, these letters are often referred to the 419 scam, after the country code of Nigeria.Over time, the scammers have become more sophisticated, with phishing scams and lottery number scams becoming the ‘fraud of choice’ for those folks who operate less than honestly. In the wireless world, a major concern is that these fraudsters can spam you not only on your PC, but on handled devices as well, so there is little reprise from them. And fraud is just the tip of the iceberg, not to mention the other crimes including identity theft, sexual exploitation, and blackmail.
To combat this, police forces worldwide have created cyber-crime task forces to deal with this. However, these criminals across legal jurisdictions, which makes law enforcement that much trickier.
Delegates from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group have recognized this problem as a threat to not only to the citizens of their countries, but as a threat to international trade and economic well-being. They agreed that all APEC economies need to develop legal frameworks that include laws and policies that do the following:
1. Criminalize conduct such as gaining unauthorized access to computer systems and causing damage to computer systems.
2. Allow law enforcement authorities to collect electronic evidence.
3. Allow economies to cooperate with each other in investigating and prosecuting cybercrime.
The European Union is also looking to cross-jurisdictional solutions in dealing with cybercrime as well. Because this is a new type of crime, new approaches must be taken to deal with it. The three points above are just a start. As the internet becomes embedded in our civilization, the harm that it can cause must be mitigated though the legal systems of all nations on the planet.
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