Cyber Crime (Part 1)

This 21st century is all about internet technology. It’s allowing us to have all information within the shortest time. It has become a very important tool for modern human life. It has facilitated people to lead a boundary less life in cyberspace and to look whatever he wishes just like looking through a window. This is often called as cyber world or virtual world. It makes the cyber world whole world as a family and ensures the concept of globalization in reality. It has given so many new concepts all over the world like e- governance, e -commerce, e-banking, e-health, online shopping etc. Besides the facility to information it opened a door to get acquainted with people and keeping relation with them through social networking sites. There are several social networking sites - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MySpace etc. these are often termed as virtual life. Like real life in this virtual life there is existence of several offences. These offences are known as cyber crime. The term “cyber crime” coined by Barry Collins in 1980’s.[1] Bangladesh though slowly but is getting used to with internet technology in all spheres of life. Here social networking is also very popular among people especially young people to be connected with friends both real life friends and virtual life friends. In Bangladesh craze for Facebook is widely seen. More and more people are getting connected with it and threat of cyber crime on social network is increasing. To combat cyber crime Bangladesh has enacted Information Communication & Technology Act, 2006. Though it covered lots of offences but still it has some lacunas since new crimes or modes are increasing rapidly. Further the major problem that is frequently seen in Bangladesh is implementation mechanism.   

What is Cyber Crime?  

Cyber crime is a technological crime. It is also known as computer crime, electronic crime, hi-tech crime and e-crime. Actually it involves a broad range of potentially illegal activities conducted by the misuse of computers and different types of communication networks. Dr. Debarati Halder and Dr. K. Jaishankar (cited in Alam p.213) define Cyber crimes as: "Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet (Chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones (SMS/MMS)".[2] The Oxford English Dictionary (cited in Alam p. 213) defines cybercrime as crime or a crime committed using computer or internet. Although the term cyber is technically limited to crimes involving the internet, it is used more broadly to refer the crimes committed using stand-alone computers.[3] 

There are four types of cyber crimes: 

1. Computer as the target of a crime 

2. Computer as a tool of the crime 

3. Computer as incidental to crime 

4. Crime associated with the prevalence of computers.

Reference:

[1]Alam, Advocate Md. Jahangir Understanding Cyber Law in Bangladesh. p 212   

[2]Halder and JaishankarCyber Crime and the Victimization of Women: Laws, Rights and Regulation(2011) Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global. ISBN 978-1-60960-830-9     

[3]Grabosky, Peter Electronic Crime(New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall 2007) p.2