Cybercrimes Commited Through Social Networking

Cybercrimes committed through Social networking
Anmol Garg,
School of Computing and Communication, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YW, UK [e-mail]

Abstract.

With the development of the internet, it had been easier to share the information globally and today with the technological advancements, it has become possible to dynamically interact with the web, which is also termed as the web 2.0.With the rise of web 2.0, there has been a noted rise in the social networking sites which have promoted a different level of sharing and staying in touch with all the friends and family at the click of a button. The good side of this technological innovation is as lucrative as its bad side for the cybercriminals to access all information about a individual with just few clicks. This has led to a reported increase in the number of cybercrime cases which generated a need for a policy framework to highlight the various preventive measures that can be used to protect an individual from being a victim of cybercrime. Therefore, the present paper is representation of the research which starts by focusing on general privacy of the social networking sites and moves to case studies in the field of identity theft, cyberstalking and child pornography in particular. Each case study tries to majorly address their connection with social networking, the general issues and the legal provisions. The final part of the research paper was drawn in form a advisory policy document which defines the general ways through which individuals can protect themselves from being the victim of a cybercrime and the need for global system for controlling cybercrime.

1

Introduction

The development of the internet and moreover, the rise of the web 2.0 has led to a rapid increase in sharing of information and interaction with different people, community and cultures. The sharing is usually done by creating an online identity of an individual in anonymous environment. This environment has no or restricted means to identify and verify the true identity of the individual with respect to the physical world. Although, this has made the web quite helpful and interactive by giving the individuals the right of freedom of speech without the attendant fear of being identified .But synchronously, even the number of cybercrimes committed has substantially increased. The anonymous and complex nature of the identities on the internet makes it further difficult to catch the perpetrator. One of major platform for the sharing of information and committing cybercrimes in the present scenario are the social networking sites. Social networking can be defined as a virtual platform or “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a

connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.”[1] These sites provide ample opportunity for a cybercriminal to access the information of any of the individual present and make the targeted individual as their victims [2].The only option in such cases is to be aware of the privacy settings or the privacy policy of the specific social networking site(s) in use. The privacy settings could help by restricting/filtering the amount of the information shared or viewable by each of the individual who accesses the profile of this individual. These settings could also make the profile of the individual unsearchable from the web as well as from within the SNS. The three major cybercrimes committed through the Social networking are identity theft, cyberstalking and child pornography [3].

2

Identity theft

Identity theft basically relates to the fact of stealing your legal identity to commit either a financial fraud or a kind of crime , the criminal doesn’t want to risk committing with his own identity. If the imposter assumes the identity for living for a long time, then its identity theft. If the imposter assumes the identity for a specific purpose/goal and then return to his own identity, it is known as identity fraud [4]. The social networking sites allow each individual to create a profile (virtual identity) by just filling in certain attributes. It is not a difficult a task to add people as friends and utilize the network resources and security to reach the consequences of committing identity theft, blackmailing or simply causing embarrassment to the concerned user [5]. The major concern of identity theft is that beyond all the financial and emotional losses, victims have to spend a lot of considerable amount of time for clearing their identity related allegations. Additionally, these victims have been denied cheque accounts, loans and any further credit [6]. The major problem with defining cyber crime related law is that law and policing are preferred to be with a geographical boundary to have a better control and it is much easier to determine clear accountability and performance .With Cybercrime, there is a lot of geographical separations, as victim may be situated in one part of the globe and the criminal may be in other. Hence, the issue of jurisdiction arises and makes the situation little complicated [7]. Certain tools like the Myid (which checks for duplicate presence of the id on the internet) [8]and M86 secure browsing (which checks for the links of the site by performing real time analysis to detect presence of phished sites and harmful content) can be used for protection against identity theft[9]. There are bodies like the European convention of cybercrime and the United Nations organisation which are trying to combine the various countries allowing the cybercriminals who have committed cybercrimes across international borders to be prosecuted by these international bodies.

Cybercrimes committed through Social networking 3

3

Cyberstalking

“The National Centre for Victims of Crime defines cyber stalking as threatening behavior or unwanted advances directed at another using Internet and other forms of online and compute communications [10].” Most of cyber stalkers spend hours every single day trying to contact their victim and even try getting in contact with their friends and family to extract more information about their victims. What worries most of the people and authorities is that online social networking sites like facebook provide the perfect portal to do this [11]. For social networks , it has been proposed to sign up for “code of practice” which would involve setting up guidelines as to how quickly and efficiently, the response procedures need to be followed in case of complaint of cyberstalking cases [12] The biggest challenge is to identify the cybercriminal through its location. In the case of these cybercrimes, the cyberstalker/harasser may be in another country, state, city or might be in the adjacent cubicle. Moreover the stalker could be anyone from a friend, lover to a complete stranger. The anonymity of the internet along with difficulty in tracing the harasser goes a long way in encouraging cyberstalkers in committing such crimes [13] In England, there is no specific legalization on cyberstalking but there are majorly two old acts that are used indirectly to include for cyberstalking and online harassment cases. These are the Protection from Harassment Act (1997) and the Malicious Communications Act (1988). Effects of cyber stalking can result many serious problems for the victim mainly in terms of psychological, social and behavioural aspects. These effects could lead to loss of job, shifting from the current home location, being extremely cautious of environment around him. Medically, it could affect the victim to experience anxiety, stress, fear, state of shock or disbelief, deprivation in sleep, nightmare [14], [15].

4

Child pornography

Child pornography can be described as the visual representation of minors under the age of 18 engaged in sexual activity or the visual representation of minors engaging in lewd or erotic behaviour designed to arouse the viewer 's sexual interest [16]. “A person feeling sexual attraction to children” can be lay men’s definition to define the term paedophile or one who is interested in child pornography. [17] Grooming is an act where in the grommer or the offender trains or prepares the child for the stage of indulging in sexual acts. [17] The most disturbing fact is when the act of grooming is carried out by the paedophiles for days, weeks or months. They majorly use the social networking sites like facebook, my space or twitter for staying in touch with their victims and grooming for the future. [18] Legally, there are many laws defined for the protection of the children and to prosecute the criminals. The England governments efforts are appreciable in terms that the laws have been revised from time to time making them equally competent with the present scenario. Even most of Internet Service providers (ISP’s) in the UK are now using the block filter provided by the internet watch foundation. The block filter usage has been made mandatory by the UK government to be implemented by every internet service provider. Although this kind of web filtering or content filtering is a quite competent way of controlling. However there are issues concerning that the filtering can also lead to over filtering or under filtering of other

contents or websites present in the UK. This kind of filtering in turn questions firstly, “the free speech advocacy on the internet and the unjustified erosions of civil liberties. [18]

5

Advisory Policy Inferences

The advisory policy is mainly aimed for the general people (someone even without the specialised computer knowledge) and provides the various measures to prevent cybercrime from each of the cybercrimes mentioned above. It also describe the various sites that can be used to report and gather information in each of the cases apart from suggested governmental actions for Internet service provider (ISP) and for creating awareness. The major conclusion which was drawn from the legal section was of having a global system for controlling cybercrime. It stresses on the development of global law for controlling cybercrime but that does require the kind of governance which would mean slashing down boundaries of economic and cultural beliefs and working together globally with just motivation – to curb cybercrime and make it possible for the cybercriminals to be prosecuted on a global platform. This has been followed by the recommendation section in which one of major recommendation deals with allotting or generating a unique code for each individual, which needs to be filled in when creating an account on the third party websites like the SNS, online e-mail service providers etc. The unique code is verified and stored in the government server .The information regarding this identification is not shared with the service providers and any other agencies, thus making it private and letting the identity of the individual remain anonymous on the internet . This could be of great help for the investigation agencies in identifying the cybercriminals, thus providing some control over the cybercrimes committed.

6

Conclusion

Through this paper, the major cybercrimes (identity theft, cyberstalking, child pornography) that are committed through the social networking platform have been discussed. From the technical front, a balance needs to found between controlling the anonymity on the internet and freedom of speech. From the legal front, Organizations like the European convention of cybercrime or the United Nations can help in combining the various countries to have a global law for governing in case of cybercrime as only that can channelize the proper prosecution, many of the cybercriminals deserve. Nevertheless, one of the major factors in people becoming victims of cybercrime is the lack of awareness about these simple issues like the various ways the cyber crime can be prevented and what needs to be done, if they become victims, which websites or organization they can go for help etc. Through this research an understanding and awareness on the issues of cybercrimes could be generated, thus educating the fellow people and making them remain as safe and sound as ever.

References
1. 2. Boyd, d. m.& Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1) Barnes, S. B. (2006). A privacy paradox: social networking in the United states. first monday , 11 (9).

Cybercrimes committed through Social networking 5 3. 4. 5. facebook. (2011). Privacy » Privacy: Privacy settings and fundamentals. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=839 Finch, E. (2006). The Problem of stolen identity and the internet. Cullompton : Willan Publishing. Gross, R. & Acquisti, A. (2005). Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks. Proceedings of WPES '05. (pp. 71-80). Alexandria, VA: Association of Computing Machinery OECD. (2009). Online identity theft. OECD publications. Cifas. (2009, oct). The Anonymous Attacker. Retrieved from ttp://www.identitytheft.org.uk: http://www.identitytheft.org.uk/cms/assets/The_Anonymous_Attacker.pdf myId. (2011, april). How to Protect Yourself from Identity Theft. Retrieved from http://www.myid.com: http://www.myid.com/blog/how-to-protect-yourself-fromidentity-theft/ m86security. (2011). m86security. Retrieved from http://www.m86security.com: http://www.m86security.com safety web (2010, june 16). cyberstalking. Retrieved from http://www.safetyweb.com: http://www.safetyweb.com/cyberstalking Blake, M. (2011, june). Government to launch inquiry into 'outdated ' cyberstalking laws. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk: telegraph. (2011). Social networks 'should do more ' on cyberstalking. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/socialmedia/8630244/Social-networks-should-do-more-on-cyberstalking.html cyberstalking. (1999). CYBERSTALKING: A NEW CHALLENGE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INDUSTRY. Retrieved from http://www.justice.gov: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/cyberstalking.ht Haryani, H., & Yusof, F. B. (2010). Cyber Stalking: The Social Impact of Social Networking Technology. IEEE. International Conference on Education and Management Technology ncvc. (2011). Cyberstalking. Retrieved from http://www.ncvc.org: http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32 458 legal-dictionary. (2007, march). Child Pornography. Retrieved from http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Child+Pornography: http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Child+Pornography ost, S. (2009). child pornography and sexual grooming. cambridge university press. Edwards, l., & Waelde, c. (2009). Law and the internet. HART publishing.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

References: 1. 2. Boyd, d. m.& Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1) Barnes, S. B. (2006). A privacy paradox: social networking in the United states. first monday , 11 (9). Cybercrimes committed through Social networking 5 3. 4. 5. facebook. (2011). Privacy » Privacy: Privacy settings and fundamentals. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=839 Finch, E. (2006). The Problem of stolen identity and the internet. Cullompton : Willan Publishing. Gross, R. & Acquisti, A. (2005). Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks. Proceedings of WPES '05. (pp. 71-80). Alexandria, VA: Association of Computing Machinery OECD. (2009). Online identity theft. OECD publications. Cifas. (2009, oct). The Anonymous Attacker. Retrieved from ttp://www.identitytheft.org.uk: http://www.identitytheft.org.uk/cms/assets/The_Anonymous_Attacker.pdf myId. (2011, april). How to Protect Yourself from Identity Theft. Retrieved from http://www.myid.com: http://www.myid.com/blog/how-to-protect-yourself-fromidentity-theft/ m86security. (2011). m86security. Retrieved from http://www.m86security.com: http://www.m86security.com safety web (2010, june 16). cyberstalking. Retrieved from http://www.safetyweb.com: http://www.safetyweb.com/cyberstalking Blake, M. (2011, june). Government to launch inquiry into 'outdated ' cyberstalking laws. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk: telegraph. (2011). Social networks 'should do more ' on cyberstalking. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/socialmedia/8630244/Social-networks-should-do-more-on-cyberstalking.html cyberstalking. (1999). CYBERSTALKING: A NEW CHALLENGE FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INDUSTRY. Retrieved from http://www.justice.gov: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/cyberstalking.ht Haryani, H., & Yusof, F. B. (2010). Cyber Stalking: The Social Impact of Social Networking Technology. IEEE. International Conference on Education and Management Technology ncvc. (2011). Cyberstalking. Retrieved from http://www.ncvc.org: http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32 458 legal-dictionary. (2007, march). Child Pornography. Retrieved from http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Child+Pornography: http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Child+Pornography ost, S. (2009). child pornography and sexual grooming. cambridge university press. Edwards, l., & Waelde, c. (2009). Law and the internet. HART publishing. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.