What Is Computer Crime?

Computer crime is defined as the use of computers to commit criminal acts. The law is spotty on computer crime. The U.S government has made it a felony to fraudulently access confidential programs or data in federal level computers. Most states also have laws that address some aspects of computer crime. But such laws notwithstanding computer crime is hard to pin down. One reason is that it is often difficult to decide when a questionably act is really a crime. No one doubts that a bank employee who uses a computer system to embezzle funds from customers accounts is committing a crime. But what about an employee who steals time on a company computer to balance a personal checkbook for a home or business or someone who uses a company computer to e-mail jokes to friends? Aren't those acts also unauthorized? Where does one draw the line?

Another problem is pinning down computer crime is that judges ad juries not to mention law enforcement personal are often bewildered by the technical issue involved in such cases. The use of computers to commit criminal acts. Also, companies that discover computer criminals among their employees frequently are reluctant to press charges because they fear even more adverse publicity.

There are no accurate, precise and reliable statistics on the amount of computer crime and the economic loss to victims, partly because many of these crimes are apparently not detected by victims. Many of these crimes are never reported to the authorities, and partially because the losses are often very difficult to calculate. However, there is a consensus among both the law enforcement personnel and the computer scientists who have specialization in the security that both the number of computer crime incidents and the sophistication of computer criminals are increasing swiftly and rapidly. There are three major and significant classes of criminal activity with the computers.

First is the unauthorized use of a computer, which might involve the stealing of a username and the password, or might involve accessing the victim's computer through the Internet via a back door, operated by the Trojan horse program. The other is the creation or releasing a malicious or spiteful computer program (for example, the computer virus, the worms and the Trojan Horse). The third category is the harassment and the stalking in the cyberspace. Another aspect of the computer crimes is the deletion of the entire files that could be an act of the vandalism or sabotage.

Online harassment , identity theft