What is meant and understood by the term computer misuse Essay

What is meant and understood by the term computer misuse - Essay Example ences with malicious activity such as hacking and viruses, which have been difficult to police due to jurisdictional difficulties and difficulties with identity tracking of offenders (Finch, 2001). This analysis particularly focuses three different aspects of potential computer misuse; namely identity theft, online harassment (otherwise referred to as â€Å"cyberstalking) and denial of service attacks (DDOS). Numerous press reports demonstrate how top financial institutions have fallen prey to cybercrime (Lloyd, 2004). The most common example is when an identity thief uses sensitive personal information to open a credit card account in a customer’s name through phishing (Thomas & Loader, 2000). Phishing is a high tech scam and uses spam to deceive customers into disclosing credit card numbers, bank account information, passwords and other sensitive information, with banks such as Abbey National and Natwest having fallen prey to phishing attack (Thomas & Loader, 2000). In phishing cases, offenders rely on the consumer trust in the familiar brand often by using the corporate branding style and logo to manipulate the consumer into a false conception of a pre-existing commercial relationship. This not only infringes the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002 and The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (â€Å"the Regulations†), which prohibit unsolicited marketing communications; the use of brand name, style and logo also infringes the business’ intellectual property rights, which devalues the goodwill in the business incurring significant financial losses. In its previous form, the Act covered two types of computer related offences; firstly the unauthorised access to computer material and unauthorised modification of computer material. However, these offences were created before the Internet boom and did not foresee the full impact of online misuse such as hacking, viruses and spamming. This falls into a grey area legally which