Essay: Cybercrime

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  • Published: 8 September 2017*
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The 177 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Philippines offering their services to the country boosted the internet users range to 33.6 million. With a large growth contributed by internet cafes which lead to increase number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).For many years, Philippines has been considered as a haven for crime committed online compare to other developed countries with cyber warfare. In the year 2000, the infamous “I love you” virus source was trace back in the country. The person behind it was caught. With the lack of policies and legislation of the government on cybercrime the creator of the “I love you” virus was released from jail promptly due to no case was filed against him. (Department of Justice, 2012)
 
As of September 12, 2012, President Benigno Aquino III signed the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 into law. People who are using internet such as blog and social networking sites are now at risk of violating the cybercrime law. (Human Rights Watch, 2012).

Cyber espionage was considered a massive threat to manufacturing sectors and small business due to its increased surge of 42% during 2012 compare to 2011. According to Symantec Internet Threat Report (ISTR) a top growing trends organization in the country, the Philippines was ranked 39th among other countries on internet threat activities. The targeted attacks were growing, from 7 to 82 per day mostly from mobile threats, malware attacks and data breaches by the end of 2011. Reported attacks primarily used social engineering and customized malware to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. (Department of Justice, 2012).

The researchers have gathered a report from Philippine National Police (PNP) and Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) on the incidents of cybercrime in the year 2013 and 2014 (See Appendix A). From this, it can be seen that in the year 2013, incidents of cybercrime were high for the month of April, October and November which had an average of 38, 41 and 42 respectively. The month of March had the lowest with 5 incidents. For the year 2014, the total number of incidents increased to 614 which was three times higher than 2013 with only 288 incidents.

A Distribution of Cybercrime for the year 2014 based on the report of the PNP and ACG, the largest percentage comes from the Internet Fraud that has 22% followed by Libel Issues that has 16% of the graph. The other cases are the R.A 9995 (Anti-Photo and Voyeurism Act of 2009) which is 11% part of the graph, 10% comes from Harassment Threat, Identity Theft 9%, R.A 8792 (Electronic Commerce Act of 2000) 8%, Sextortion/Referred Cases 7%, R.A 8484(Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998) 4%, R.A 9262 (Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children) 1%, ATM Fraud 1%, Credit Card Fraud 1%, R.A 7610 Child Abuse Law and, Others 5% (See Appendix B).

A study made by Global Web Index, a world’s largest market research study on the digital consumers (See Appendix C). Philippines is ranked 6th out of 32 countries with a 31% of internet penetration in the world age 16 to 24.

A report made by comScore, an internet technology company that measures the activity of internet user as they navigate through digital world. Indicates that the majority online users in Southeast Asia are under the age of 35. 71% of Philippines internet audience is between 15 and 34 of age (See Appendix D).

A cybercrime such as computer-related fraud, computer-related identity theft, spamming and cybersex can be penalized through a long term imprisonment. A simple like, tweet, share and comment may violate the cybercrime law. (Meruenas, 2014).

According to Department of Justice’s (DOJ) primer, cybercrime is one of the fastest growing crimes around the globe; Norton Cyber Crime Report has reported 431 million adults worldwide were victims of cybercrime in 2011 with the casualties of $114 billion. In addition to this, the DOJ has also stated that 87% of Filipino Internet users have been victimized by cybercrime particularly in malware invasion, online or phishing scams, sexual predation and social networking sites as of 2010. (Department of Justice, 2012)

Filipinos are using mobile phones to communicate and connect to the internet. A study was conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), a global customized research company from November 2012 to January 2013, of the 38,000 respondents in Metro Manila, 75 percent of the respondents used their mobile for taking photos or videos; 45 percent to browse the internet; 44 percent to access social networking sites; and 37 percent to check their emails. Based on the study findings, with the increase of mobile activities explain the trend about Wi-Fi in public areas. The study also showed that the Smartphone usage in the Philippines is now at 53 percent compared to mobile phone usage which is 89 percent. (Philstar, 2013)

According to Mikkonen (2011), cell phones e-mania has spread all over the globe. Strategy Analytics have estimated that worldwide mobile phone subscription will rise to 3.9 billion in 2013; that is more than half the world’s population. And smartphones in their various forms enable you not only to make voice calls, but also to send and receive text messages, browse the web and obtain news, research, music, movies and photos. In addition to this, the development of mobile software was addressed as a fashion in technologies in different mobile platform that used as a basis for its implementation. The number of mobile platforms has been increasing; it is becoming an option to aim at discussing the difference between workstation and embedded software and software that runs on mobile devices. (Carrabis, 1989).

With the rapid growth of mobile phone around the globe, cyber web threats are not only limited to computer, TrendMicro a company that focuses on the internet content security, predicted in their 12 Security Prediction of 2012 stated that the smartphones and tablets will be likely to be targeted by cybercriminal attacks. Users may mistakenly download an app from app store containing malicious and unwanted program from cybercriminals (Abendan II, n.d.).

Utilizing the use of smartphones and mobile phones and apply it as a pocket database, it would be a big help for the end users. Not only for a database but also the development of a system that can provide the end users with suggestions, such as Decision Support Systems (DSS) can be a much more useful tool. A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-bases information system that provides a flexible tool for analysis and helps people their decision on the future. DSS applications are not single information resources, such as a database or a program that graphically represents sales figures, but a combination of integrated resources working together. (Carrabis, 1989).

Conceptual Framework

Figure 5 shows the paradigm of the study. On the input stage, researchers shall gather all the necessary data for the study. All important tools shall be prepared. In the process stage, the researchers will analyze, develop and test all the collected information from the input stage. The final stage will be the output, which is the result of input and process stage.

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