Five Forms Of White Collar Crimes Committed Through Information Technology

Computer and Internet Fraud

Questions:

1. Five forms of white collar crimes committed through the use of information technology?

2. Analysis on techniques used to commit crimes has changed with the advancing of information technology?

3. Example of each form of white collar crime?

According to Arnulf & Gottschalk (2012), White collar crime is a non-violent crime, involves the crime that is to be committed through deceit as well as motivated by the financial gain. The types of white collar crimes are internet fraud, tax evasion, money laundering as well as embezzlement. The most common crime that falls under white collar crimes is insurance fraud as well as tax evasion (Dobovšek & Slak, 2015). Many scams as well as frauds fall into the white collar crime. This crime is committed by the people in the business world to gain access to large amount of fund.

Computer and Internet fraud:  The computer hackers steal the information that is contained on the computer hard disks which includes bank related details, details of credit card, proprietary information. The victim uses the technological tools to access a secure internet location (Krismann, 2014). The criminal can intercept the private information of the victim such as the id, password, and information of credit card. This is referred to as identity theft.

Computer hacking: It occurs when an unknown gains some illegal access to protect their computer by exploiting their vulnerabilities of the system. The hackers use the experts of the software to break the security codes to access the information stored in the computer (Gold, 2012). Web Application Security expertise tracks the hacking incident that are reported in medium and this result into the vulnerabilities in the web application security (Bhat & Abulaish, 2014).

Phishing: It is a virtual trap that is set by the offender to use the official e-mails to attract the victim; take them to a fake websites to take the personal information of the victim. The criminal requires the internal information of an organization by hacking the computer network of that organization (Heinonen, Spink & Wilson, 2014). They send e-mails to the targeted victims to click on an e-mail to provide their password, user id as well as access codes etc.

Copyright infringement: It is the activity that includes both physical harm and violence. The criminal uses the unauthorized use of the copyrighted materials. The use of internet is increasing for infringement activities that make the criminal sanction better prevention, thus the internet copyright infringement becomes a white collar crime. It causes many security risks to an organization that includes the infiltration of malware as well as viruses that threaten the security of the system and slow down the IT networks (Eivazi, 2012).

Money laundering: It is the associated with the crimes that provide financial gain to the criminal (Zabyelina, 2015). The criminal is using electronic technology to execute the crime of money laundering (Stack, 2015). The use of new technology provides more avenues to the criminal to launder fund. Therefore, the criminals are being benefited from the technology (Behrens, 2015).

Computer Hacking

A wide range of new technology has been developed that is used as a crime prevention tools. These innovation techniques are appearance of threat assessment protocols, new software programs is developed to prevent the identity theft, a new assessment tools is developed to identify the individuals those are likely offender within the specified frame of time (Furnell & Moore, 2014). A program referred to as GIS mapping is used to examine the location of the offender (Wright, 2012). The other area in which the information technology is used to prevent the crime is the use of newly developed software as well as creation of new devices to monitor the transaction over the internet on web bases social networking sites (Perri, 2011). It has changed the way of investigating the financial crime, internet related crime (Braithwaite, 2010).

Data encryption is the procedure that is used to prevent the cyber crime; it is used in cryptography to convert the plaintext into cipher text. Mainly, it is used to prevent the criminal to read the message of any recipient. In this procedure, each individual has a pair of keys, i.e. public as well as private key (Jo, Lee & Choi, 2015). Public key of each individual is published but the private key is kept back secret from others. The messages are being encrypted using the public key and it is decrypted using private key. Digital signature is the technique that is used to validate both the authenticity as well as integrity of the software as well as message or any digital document (Cui & Jiang, 2012). It solves the problem of tampering in digital communications (Zhu & Yang, 2015). It also provides the assurance of confirmation to identity as well as the importance of an electronic document (Savu, 2012). Therefore, digital signature makes complicated for the signer to deny have signed something as it is unique to both the document as well as signer.  It is also used to provide safe transaction over the internet.  In many countries, digital signature has the legal significance of signed documents (M E & K C, 2015).

Online fraud: Western union is used for doing online fraud; most of the scams encouraged the clients to use western union for transferring of funds (Sajid Bashir, 2011). As western union does not offer escrow services, thus the clients cannot get any return for non-receipt of goods as well as services (Gottschalk, 2011). It is not an appropriate way to transfer the funds for any business purposes.

Online hacking: The state of Montana’s department of health exposed that an information breach affected their business. It is being seen that the personal information of current as well as former residents, the families of the dead have been accessed in the attack. (Michael, 2012). It is not clear if the hackers are using the information or selling on black market (Lakoff, 2012). The hacker’s information gained some access to personal information like records of medical, records of insurance, address and certificates of date of birth (Gottschalk & Glasø, 2013).

Phishing

Phishing: In the year 2003, the users received emails from eBay claim that the account of the users was about to hanging the information of the credit card that the genuine eBay already had (Gupta & Pieprzyk, 2011). It is easy to make website that is look like the organization’s site; the scam on the people being tricked by thinking them that it was being contacted by eBay and they were updating their account information in the eBay’s sites (Li, Zhao & Jiao, 2011).

Copyright infringement: Pharmaceutical companies make fake claims about drugs as well as factories are unlawfully dump toxic wastes. Hooker Chemical Company dumped toxic waste into canal in Nigeria falls and sold the land without disclose the dumping (Larsson, 2013). The land was sold to private housing developer and the resident’s faces major health problems such as birth defects etc (Miller, 2012).

Money laundering: A French bank fled guilty for falsifying business record after it was discovered that the institution violated US sanctions against Cuba, Sudan and Iran (Mugarura, 2015). As a result, the bank was to pay the amount of $8.9 billion which is the largest fine for violating those sanctions (Markovska & Adams, 2015).

Conclusion

Internet is a new access to white collar crimes. It has a bigger effect on the economy. It is a non-violent act that is committed by business person as well as public official. Most of the white collar crimes involved significant use or misuse of a computer. Social as well as technological changes give rise to white collar crime. The hackers access information that is contained on the computer hard disks which includes bank related details, details of credit card etc. Phishing is a virtual trap that is set by the cyber criminals to use the official e-mails to attract the victim and take them to a fake websites and then by tricking the victim and take their personal information. Data encryption is used to prevent the criminal to read the message of any recipient. Therefore, digital signature makes complicated for the signer to deny have signed something as it is unique to both the document as well as signer.

References List

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