Technology

Web 2.0 has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and applications. These communities provide places for information sharing and collaboration. They also open the door for inappropriate online activities, such as harassment, in which some users post messages in a virtual community that are intentionally offensive to other members of the community. It is a new and challenging task to detect online harassment; currently few systems attempt to solve this problem. In this paper, we use a supervised learning approach for detecting harassment. Our technique employs content features, sentiment features, and contextual features of documents. The experimental results described herein show that our method achieves significant improvements over several baselines, including Term Frequency- Inverse Document Frequency (TFIDF) approaches. Identification of online harassment is feasible when TFIDF is supplemented with sentiment and contextual feature attributes.

With the emergence of new technologies and innovations the World is also facing alarming increase in the crimes and a cyber crime is one of the most vulnerable crimes emerging now a day. India too is no exception in the paradigm of cyber crime. Cyber crimes in India are gaining momentum from simple e-mail type of crime to serious crime like hacking, source code theft etc. Cyberstalking is on the rise and women, senior citizens and children are the most likely targets. This paper examines cyber stalking as an example of a crime that is simultaneously both amenable to, and resistant of, traditional forms of legislation, depending upon the way in which the possibilities of the Internet are exploited. The paper attempts to discuss the modes of cyber crimes, categories of cyber stalkers, psychology of cyber stalkers, motives of cyber stalkers and the nature victims. The paper also attempts to suggest measures to prevent the crime and deal cyber stalkers.

The purpose of this paper is to show how certain uses of search-engine technology raise concerns for personal privacy. In particular, we examine some privacy implications involving the use of search engines to acquire information about persons. We consider both a hypothetical scenario and an actual case in which one or more search engines are used to find information about an individual. In analyzing these two cases, we note that both illustrate an existing problem that has been exacerbated by the use of search engines and the Internet – viz., the problem of articulating key distinctions involving the public vs. private aspects of personal information. We then draw a distinction between “public personal information” (or PPI) and “nonpublic personal information” (or NPI) to see how this scheme can be applied to a problem of protecting some forms of personal information that are now easily manipulated by computers and search engines – a concern that, following Helen Nissenbaum (1998, 2004), we describe as the problem of privacy in public. In the final section of this paper, we examine a relatively recent privacy theory introduced by James Moor (2004) to see whether that theory can shed any light on privacy concerns surrounding the use of search engines to acquire personal information. Although no definitive solution to the problems examined in this paper are proposed, we conclude by suggesting that Moor’s privacy theory could help us to frame – via debate in an open and public forum – a coherent on-line privacy policy concerning whether, and which kinds of, personal information should be accessible to search engines.

This paper aims to provide an introduction to a range of abusive behaviours that young people may encounter online, including cyber stalking, abusive cyber sex and online grooming. The principle author has spent over eight years researching various aspects of online activity, including both criminal behaviours.
 
A number of legal definitions of these particular deviant online behaviours have been developed, for example, UK’s Protection From Harassment Act 1997 and most recently within the UK, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. However, there is a shortage of programmes of education designed to address these online behaviours. The aim of this paper is to propose a blueprint for the development of Internet safety programmes designed to educate young people about the nature of abusive online activities. Currently, there is a clear need for information that summarises abusive online activities in a way that is accessible both to young people and also to those who are responsible for children’s well being, including parents, carers and teachers. It is also vitally important that those in a position to mediate these activities, for example chat room moderators and also policy makers interested in addressing abusive online behaviours, have a clear insight into not only the nature of abusive online activities, but crucially possible proactive and reactive strategies.

Since the dawn of the Information Age, individuals have used technology to commit crimes. Initially such acts were committed by those with specific skills or knowledge to break or hack into computer1 systems and/or manipulate them to steal services, data and/or funds. Some also used their skills to simply destroy systems and/or data. Increased computer availability, use and connectivity particularly with the advent of the Internet, has made the general population, including criminals, accustomed to computers and their uses.

Technology can dramatically increase the effects of criminal behavior and therefore poses a unique risk to the community. For example, near perfect counterfeit checks and currency can be easily created with today’s technology. As a result, juveniles committ delinquent acts that in the past only sophisticated adult criminals could accomplish (Bowker, 1999 and 2000).

Furthermore, technology is being used by other types of criminal offenders. The 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment reflects:

“Gang members often use cell phones and the Internet to communicate and
promote their illicit activities. Street gangs typically use the voice and text messaging
capabilities of cell phones to conduct drug transactions and prearrange meetings
with customers. Members of street gangs use multiple cell phones that they frequently
discard while conducting their drug trafficking operations. For example, the leader
of an African American street gang operating on the north side of Milwaukee used
more than 20 cell phones to coordinate drug-related activities of the gang; most
were prepaid phones that the leader routinely discarded and replaced. Internetbased
methods such as social networking sites, encrypted e-mail, Internet telephony
and instant messaging are commonly used by gang members to communicate
with one another and with drug customers. Gang members use social networking
Internet sites such as MySpace®, YouTube®, and Facebook® as well as personal
web pages to communicate and boast about their gang membership and related
activities” (pg. 10).

The internet is revolutionising our society by driving economic growth and giving people new ways to connect and co-operate with one another. Falling costs mean accessing the internet will become cheaper and easier, allowing more people in the UK and around the world to use it, ‘democratising’ the use of technology and feeding the flow of innovation and productivity. This will drive the expansion of cyberspace further and as it grows, so will the value of using it.
 
Chapter 1 describes the background to the growth of the networked world and the immense social and economic benefits it is unlocking. As with most change, increasing our reliance on cyberspace brings new opportunities but also new threats. While cyberspace fosters open markets and open societies, this very openness can also make us more vulnerable to those – criminals, hackers, foreign intelligence services – who want to harm us by compromising or damaging our critical data and systems.
 
Chapter 2 describes these threats. The impacts are already being felt and will grow as our reliance on cyberspace grows. The networks on which we now rely for our daily lives transcend organisational and national boundaries. Events in cyberspace can happen at immense speed, outstripping traditional responses (for example, the exploitation of cyberspace can mean crimes such as fraud can be committed remotely, and on an industrial scale). Although we have ways of managing risks in cyberspace, they do not match this complex and dynamic environment. So we need a new and transformative programme to improve our game domestically, as well as continuing to work with other countries on an international response.
 
Chapter 3 sets out where we want to end up – with the Government’s vision for UK cyber security in 2015.

In 2010, the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee continued to refine the process by which domestic violence homicides and homicide-suicides were reviewed. In particular, the process and methods used for gathering, calculating and presenting statistical information pertaining to the cases reviewed by the DVDRC are being re-examined in order to ensure consistency, accuracy and reliability. As such, all data collected to date will undergo further analysis and refinement, as necessary. For this reason, this 2010 Annual Report of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee will only contain statistical information pertaining to the actual cases reviewed in 2010...
 
...Chapter Four of this annual report touches on some of the recurring themes that emerged from the cases reviewed in 2010. The following themes are examined in further detail: domestic violence in the workplace, the utilization of information and communication technologies to further abuse victims of domestic violence and safe separation.

The Australian Businesses Assessment of Computer User Security (ABACUS) survey asked businesses to identify the computer security tools that they had used to protect against computer security incidents during the 2007 financial year (Richards 2009). Computer security incidents were defined as any unauthorised use, damage, monitoring attack or theft of your business information technology. Anti-virus software was the most widely used computer security tool by small businesses (those with 0–19 employees), medium businesses (20–199 employees) and large businesses (200 or more employees). Firewalls, anti-spam filters, anti-spyware software and password verification were also commonly used computer security tools, with more than half of businesses reporting using each of these tools.

By enabling human interaction without the constraints of physical barriers and with the perception of anonymity, the Internet has become the ideal instrument for individuals who wish to intimidate, threaten, and harass others. A stalker can use the Internet to send alarming messages anywhere, within a matter of moments, under the guise of a fictitious screen name or pseudonym. Understanding how offenders use the Internet to stalk victims in cyberspace can provide law enforcement officers with solutions when they encounter impediments investigating these types of cases.

The malaise of electronic spam mail that solicit illicit partnership using bogus business proposals (popularly called 419 mails) remained unabated on the internet despite concerted efforts. In addition to these are the emergence and prevalence of phishing scams that use social engineering tactics to obtain online access codes such as credit card number, ATM pin numbers, bank account details, social security number and other personal information[22]. In an age where dependence on electronic transaction is on the increase, the web security community will have to devise more pragmatic measures to make the cyberspace safe from these demeaning ills. Understanding the perpetrators of internet crimes and their mode of operation is a basis for any meaningful effort towards stemming these crimes. This paper discusses the nature of the criminals engaged in fraudulent cyberspace activities with special emphasis on the Nigeria 419 scam mails. Based on a qualitative analysis and experiments to trace the source of electronic spam and phishing e-mails received over a six months period, we provide information about the scammers’ personalities, motivation, methodologies and victims. We posited that popular e-mail clients are deficient in the provision of effective mechanisms that can aid users in identifying fraud mails and protect them against phishing attacks. We demonstrate, using state of the art techniques, how users can detect and avoid fraudulent e-mails and conclude by making appropriate recommendations based on our findings.