Terms and conditions is one of the important issues for website owners. A website owner cannot control who access to his site and information and how the users use the information. So, it is essential for all website owners to have terms and conditions to protect themselves from foreseeable and unforeseeable issues and that are claimed by the user of the website as a result of their confidence on the information of the website.

Terms and conditions are mostly needed when a website provides a product, service or advice for customers or visitors. In most of the websites when users want to use it is necessary to accept and being aware of all conditions before using the website and any pre-purchase. For instance, by reading the terms and conditions, customers will be informed that who is responsible if their purchased product is lost while shipping as well as any warrantees or guarantees on the product.

As a result of such issues, it is important for websites to have very clear terms and conditions. For example a website that sells alcohol in Australia, the users before entering the site should first verify their age that must be more than 18 and the second one is that all users should have membership to do any purchase. This condition is in order to have more security while trading online.

I think having terms and condition is very important for website owners irrespective of the type of online business or service and they can even protect a website ideas and content from being copied.

Source: www.legalis.net

Jurisdiction

This post of mine is about jurisdiction. A word you may not heard about it because it is a word that used most by courts. If I want to give a simple definition, I can say that jurisdiction is the legal right or better the power of courts and judges to do their authority and decide about happened cases.

When a case happens in the unbound internet area, it is very important to investigate which country or state has authority to track the case. For example, when someone in US defrauds someone else in UK, which country has authority to go through the case? So many examples exist in the internet about jurisdiction but, to find the answer we should know about the cause and effect of the act.

In this situation, the cause of fraud is located in US but the effect of the criminal act is in UK. So, both countries have the right of follow the case in their courts.

Now suppose when someone create and release a virus to destroy or hack others’ accounts around the world, all countries’ court which are affected by this criminal act have jurisdiction.

Like many other legal issues, the more important aspect is implementation and being committed to the protocols which signed between countries.

Source:www.legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com

Cyber marketing

This term is used more by businesses and refers to use of internet to attract potential customers. They do this marketing activity by for example by using advertising for their products and services that they offer. These advertisings are shown to customers through websites, emails and so on. The businesses find profitable customers through their cyber marketing and then interact with them to improve their business activities. These activities may be such as online marketing.

It is obvious that there are some advantages and disadvantages with this activity. For example customers have enough time to search for their needed information without stress. And also companies can increase the number of their customers and also increase their profitability and growth opportunities.

But there are some frauds that happen in these situations. Crimes often happen in this field are credit card fraud and usage. Customers sometimes have fear to give their credit card information to buy a product. The other crime is that every person who runs the website is doing it with a unique IP address. If you receive many sales leads, each of them should have its own IP address, so if not, then there is a fraud.  There should be always coincidence between the information of the credit card and the contact information.

source:www.cyberlaw.org

Telemedicine

This subject that I will give a summary about it may be unfamiliar to you called Telemedicine. Simply the definition is the practice and activity of medicine when the doctor and patient are widely separated through the use of telecommunication technologies like computer For example when there is a distance between a rural hospital with a patient and city hospital with more and better equipments to make diagnostics, so the health personnel who works in rural hospital can share everything to other information about the patient and the doctor who is in distance can even talk to the patient and make decision. Even surgeries can take place through this kind of technology.

But there is a risk here that who has the right to access to those patient information and who is responsible to ensure the patient the information will be kept safe. Any disclosure of the patient information is a risk related to telemedicine and this can result to defamation claims by patient.

Besides, I believe there are also some advantages to telemedicine in addition to its obvious risks. For example the number of doctors or personnel in rural areas is not enough so the existence of this technology extend the access and reach of the doctors. And also I think it may lead health personnel remain in rural areas because it provides the field to online and ongoing retaining and collaboration with other health professionals.

In Malaysia this act is cited under the ACT 1997.

source:cybertelemedicine.blogspot.com

Defamation

In this part Defamation is the topic which I am going through it.

Defamation is false statements or actions of another that injures the reputation or character of someone. It can be an attack on the good name of a person. This kind of attack could happen through two types; libel and slender. Libel is a statement through the written or print forms. This kind of defamation can simply cause the victim to be avoided by the others. The other form of defamation, slender, is through spoken statements or gesture. It means you hear the injuring statements not see them such as rumors and spreading lies that somebody tells about you as a victim. In this kind, you may be injured regarding to your profession or business. Important thing about defamation is that the victim has the right to sue against the defamer for punishment and damages and for the victim having the witness is not needed necessarily. The victim can prove defamation on his own words, however sometimes having confirming evidence is better like an email.

Before taking the course of cyber law, I thought, and many people still think, that you can be anonymous through internet and you may not be responsible about your actions. But, it is considerable that everybody is responsible about his or her actions such as their weblog content, emails, status in social networks and even their comments in other’s weblog.

source:injury-law.freeadvice.com

  

If I go more through cyber terrorism subject, I can say that there is another level of attack in cyber terrorism that has political motivations and better saying it is the combination of political activities and hacking. This is hacktivism. There are some types of attacks against computer systems like physical, syntactic and semantic that you might not have any idea and even heard about it.

In physical attacks, attackers use weapons such as bombs or fire. In syntactic attack the attacker use a kind of software to damage the computers or networks. This software is sometimes referred to malicious software. The attackers may do it through sending emails.

In the third one that is caused by producing errors and unpredictable marks or results in computers by publishing incorrect information to users computers in order to attack users confidence. One example of computer based attack was related to Israel and Palestine conflict in 2000. Some Israeli teenagers did syntactic attacks against computers which were maintained by Palestinian organization Hezbollah and Hamas. So to respond to this attack Palestinians immediately crashed a number of Israeli websites which among those websites some were belonged to Israel Defense Force, the Bank of Israel and the Foreign Ministry.

I believe cyber terrorism phenomenon can be a critical matter and issue for the computer industry and society in general and it seems the countries must legislate strong law against cyber terrorism and more important is being committed to the law.

source:www.symantec.com

In my previous post, I wrote an introduction about cyber terrorism in this and next parts I will continue the discussion.

Generally cyber terrorism is created to describe the computer-based attacks against the target’s assets. These attacks happen in cyberspace and all will show some common elements to all acts of terrorism. One is that cyber terrorist will attack on purpose and the attack should be planned since they involve the acquisition of software to do the attack. The second one is that the attacks are designed to impact political structure and cyber terrorists are hackers with political motivation.

The other one is that cyber terrorists often attack civilian interests that result in violence against person or property and generate fear. The last one is that cyber terrorism is sometimes separated from cyber warfare or information warfare which these are computer-based attacks designed by nation and states.

Cyber warfare is another form of cyber attacks that is used to describe aspects of defending and attacking information in cyberspace as well as denying the target’s ability to do the same. In cyber warfare or information warfare the information technology is used as an instrument to attack the target or better adversary’s computer system. Personal information warfare is a kind of attack such as corrupting the personal information such as medical or credit files information. And the other one can be global in information warfare which aims at a country’s critical computer system to disrupt the country by disabling its systems, such as communication, transportation and so on.

Cyber Terrorism

In this part I discuss a little about a subject that maybe not familiar to many of people; cyber terrorism

Cyber terrorism is the use of internet by terrorists to fear or threaten the people or society or another kind of cyber terrorism is the disruption of information that is stored on computer networks. But the terrorists deny the existence of cyber terrorism and call it as hacking. Or better, when information of individuals or organizations is in danger by unethical users.

They themselves define it activities that threaten the safety of individuals or organizations internet. Unfortunately, some countries that have problem with each other use the opportunity of cyber terrorism against each other. In fact, the transformation of the war from traditional definition to the modern one, provide an opportunity for countries to attack against the enemies. But, according to the dangers of cyber terrorism and threats against folks, the importance of legislation an international law against cyber terrorism is increasing.

Although the legislation of the law is important, the commitment of countries to implement it effectively is more important.

source:www.symantec.com

Privacy Policy

In my previous post I pointed out the privacy on internet that involves the security aspect of individual or information. Where the vast information is on the internet so, it needs some security to keep them safe. In this part I am going to discuss about risks of internet privacy.

We know that in today’s world or better technological world, many of people are subject to threats of privacy. Companies will watch what you are visiting online and also to infiltrate the information and send advertising while watching their sites. People set up account for social networks like facebook or myspace or they enter bank or credit cards information to various websites. So, having concerns are normal or people through using internet. These concerns may be about malicious acts such as misusing their personal information or even sometimes acts such as spreading of spywares that are software’s which collect information form user’s computer without permission.

So, privacy policy is provided on most of social networking sites to ensure their users about the protection of their entered information. For instance, on facebook the privacy policy is that users have ability to block certain individuals from seeing their profile and prevent them from the access to their picture and videos. However there is weakness in this site that is when users deactivate their profiles, their information will remain on the facebook’s database.

Me, as a user, believe that it should be the user’s right to apply such settings when providing personal information on the internet.

source: http://www.stjo.org

Privacy Policy

When you are the owner of your website you cannot control that your visitors come from neither which countries nor which countries and visitors view your websites. So the best way is to have strong privacy policy that covers all the anticipated which you are likely to do business with them. And with the nature of privacy policy on the internet concerns related to misuses of information given will be the same in many countries. So laws and requirements in this field will be similar to each other.

When there is really no way to control that who will visit the site, so the best and safest way is creating a privacy policy for the website within the scope of jurisdiction that the countries are in.

So in my opinion, in this situation when any problem related to your business website raises it will be determined by the court of jurisdiction or country in most instances.

In next post I will discuss more about privacy policy issues.  

continue...

It seems to be difficult to identify the users who have access to the not legal version of standards however there are some ways to prevent the violation of copyright. One way is to give awareness to users about for example the consequences of copyright violation. The other way can be a famous method that is used to identifying the whole information of author and then protecting the copyright by inserting bit into audio, video and even digital images.

It is considerable that there is no internationally protection for authors’ works and it depends to the particular country. There are some categories that cannot be protected by copyright like investigations and the performance that are not written or recorded. Or short phrases, names, concepts, designs are not protected by copyright if they are not recorded or fixed.

I believe that having the copyright law is not merely a guarantee to protect authors’ work but implementing this law is needed to guarantee the authors’ works. For example, although Iran has copyright law (for domestic products), but the government does not implement this law effectively. So, we witness the breaches the copyright in our country.   

Source: http://www.cyberspacelaw.org/

In this part I am going to discuss about securing a copyright. When a work is created by the author for the first time and registered under copyright, it is protected by copyright automatically. But, securing the copyright is so difficult because there are lots of ways that the rules broken.

In cyber space or internet the problem is in more expand. By increasing in technologies in computer networks, anybody who can read about something can also make a copy. It is important to notice that web pages are the same as tangible products and the content of them are the same as magazines, books and required copyright protection. Taking the content of one website and then reproducing and using it in another website become easy and available by digital technology. So, the original work of author will be in danger. In order to protect the authors’ works, we can consider these followings;

The first is to ensure that the work is properly marked. The second could be registration of the work that is required when the author wants to claim the work belonging. And the third one is if the author works in group so coworkers’ agreement is important and required.

source: www.researchcopyright.com

Introduction to copyright

Copyright, you may heard a lot this word about books, musics or other intelectual works. This right is given to author of created work for a number of years. But it is considerable to know that who can claim for copyright? The answer is when the work is created in the fix form, copyright protection takes place. When the copyright is the property of the author imidiately one by creating the work. The author is the only person who can claim the copyright. This right has different categories to work or better these are some tangible works that are protected by copyright; musical works, dramatic works, pantomimes and graphic works and sound recordings.

In future posts I will discuss more about securing the copyright and how we can prevent copyright law violation.   

Royal Wedding Spam

Perhaps you also received a hot email in your inbox as “Kate’s wedding dress details-leaked”. Or “Prince William’s bachelor party photos”. If you click on these emails, then you will probably be spammed. Royal wedding has created frenzy for Kate and wedding-related searches on Google and millions of people around the world expected to view the ceremony on their computers. But the problem or danger is here when there are lots of people around the world online. For instance, in such events the cyber criminals are looking to crash the wedding hype. Phishing scams and royal wedding related search engine poisoning.

As I pointed out in previous post, phishing scams spread malicious software by using email attachments and with search engine poisoning, criminals are tempting unsuspecting users to websites with malware. When the users click on these sites, the malware infest their computers, looking for sensitive personal information. For example, the experts found that around 22 of the first 100 searches on Google for royal wedding ceremony were poisoned links. This act is a sample of computer crime and based on act 1997, section 3, a person who is found guilty is liable to a maximum RM50'000 fine or to five years imprisonment or to both.

 As a result, there are some simple ways to prevent the dangers of scammers. The first one would be not to click on emails that conclude “leaked” or any secret information. The second is when a website seems to be risky; you can use ones that are more familiar and reputable to you. The royal wedding was an e-royal wedding because of so many information about it is on sites and blogs and this provided plenty of ways for cyber criminals to do what they want to do.     

Source: www.topics.cnn.com

As we know, Children spend more and more time daily on using internet and this can bring concerns for their parents.because excess in use of internet can affect their natural and common activities and behavior such as socializing. For example isolation can be a danger for some young computer users.

In this part I point out some real risks to children in using internet. One is that the personal information that children use to create their member-profiles can be misused in a variety of ways including marketing directed at children and by child predators. The second risk would be the pornography sites which are found while surfing the web by mistyping addresses and also misleading names to websites and links from other sites. This is a serious area of concerns for many parents.

In addition to pornography, there are other inappropriate sites like those that promote racism or misinformation on important health issues such as birth control and so on.

Other dangers to children that are common nowadays and day-in, day –out we see and hear so many news about crimes happened in these areas are cyber-bullying, online solicitation, ubiquitous access that the last one is about other devices like iPods and iTunes that have access to the internet and have the same or even more risk than computers, namely desk – and lap-top computers .I have mentioned more about these devices in previous posts.

As a result, I think parents should keep control over their children in using computers and internet to prevent or reduce in possible crimes that could happen to them. As a matter of fact, they can advise them to follow some rules that can keep them safe regarding to mentioned crimes. Simply some of these helpful advices are as below:

• -         Never get together with someone who they meet online
• -         Don’t share personal information
• -         Talk to their parents if frightened

Source: www.independent.ie

Being lost in cyber space

It is a fact that internet is the spearhead of digital industrial revolution but, we should not forget that it has also very dangerous effects on life of some people. According to statistics, one of the reasons of getting divorce in some families is related to cyber sex or cyber affairs. In other word, every year tones of employees have been fired for the reason of cyber lacking at work due to excessive email or downloading pornography or endless cyber surfing.

Fred, 29 year old whose sexual pre-occupation became dangerous when combined with the power of internet. He was addicted to pornography on internet and completely lost his control. He also spent a large amount of money for buying porno films using credit card.

For Fred and some others, any interaction with the internet become so sexually stimulating that in leads to an addictive pattern of use.

In my opinion, recognition of both the dark and light side of internet will enable us to be served by technology instead of ensnared by it.

source:www.drdavegreenfield.com

Plagiarism and law

We can define plagiarism simply as when someone uses someone else words or ideas and pass them of as his own. And the only way for protection of contents for owners is the Digital Millennium Copyright Acts (DMCA). In this matter, the copyright law will offer some resources in order to stop and report plagiarism to protect writers, web developers and content owners from illegal infringement and plagiarism.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement are obviously defined by the DMCA. Under this act, the criminals will be tried, fined and incarcerated.

By striving to prevent, detect and report plagiarism there will be no incentives to thieves to continue stealing your valuable contents.

Source: www. Plagiarismtoday.com

Cyber Stalking

The paradoxical nature of the internet makes the accurate way of using this facility more difficult. Day-to-day we witness the misusing of the cyber space like releasing viruses, hackings, frauds or trespassing on other’s privacy. One of these infringements is cyber stalking.

When an individual or group of individuals or even an organization exposures to repeated acts like harassment or threatening behavior through internet or other electronic means we call this as cyber stalking. These acts can be included of following the victim, make threats, damage to data or equipment or also the solicitation of minors for sex and so on. In this part, young people face more risk of having cyber stalkers like attempting to set-up meeting between them.

Research has shown that the majority of the stalkers are the dejected or ex-lovers who failed to satisfied their secret desire.

Social networks such as Facebook provide an easier way for cyber stalkers. For example, one of the misusing of the social networks occurs when stalkers steal some private information like images to create an account under the name of victim and publish the fake information against that victim in that mentioned page.

source: http://www.wiredsafety.org

This weblog is created for the purposes of assignment for the subject BYL 7134, Cyberlaw by Faculty of Management, Multimedia University, Malaysia. The materials posted on this weblog are for the purposes of the assignment as well as study and non-profit research only. Appropriate acknowledgements to the materials that do not belong to the weblog owner have been publicly made. If you are the author or a copyright or a trademark owner of any of the articles or images or graphics or pictures or any material posted in this weblog herein and you object to such posting on any grounds, including copyright or trademark infringement, please contact me and I will take your material down. I state herein that I am relying on the doctrine of fair use. “

Cyber crime goes mobile

The increase in use of mobile devices or in particular smart phones is shifting from PC's environment to mobile users. It causes new terms of criminal acts since 2009. For example, Mobile malware, a program in which a harmful code was used to steal banking information by keystroke logging so far. 

Products like iPhones, iPads and iTunes media service that are developed with high operating systems and better shape are not either immune from these crimes despite the company is ensuring the users that these devices are much more safer and secure than others, notably Windows. The main problem is malware that allowed applications to access information on an iPhone users location without permission. 

Grounded in definition of computer under S.2 Computer Crime Acts 1997, computer is a "an electronic, magnetic, optical, electrochemical, or other data processing device,  performing logical, arithmetic, storage and display function, and includes any data storage facility or communications facility”. As a matter of fact, devices such as iPhone, iPhads or iTunes are counted as computer. So, the users should be aware of the way of using these devices to prevent commiting computer crimes.

source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/mobile/226915/cybercrime-goes-mobile

Be aware of phishing

Phishing is the act of sending an email (claiming to be a legitimate enterprise) to users.
 this email direct the users to visit a website on which they are asked to update personal information like passwords,credit card,social security and also bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has.
An example of phishing happened in 2003 that the users receive an email from eBay,falsely claiming that the users account were about to be suspended unless the users clicked on the provided link and then updated the credit card information. people simply thought that email as real and went to eBays site and updated their account information. phisher can uses this information to fraud or simply transfer funds of user's account.
This act is a sample of computer crime and based on act 1997, section , is liable to a maximum RM50'000 fine or to five years imprisonment or to both. 
To additional information, some new softwares have been recently produced to protect users against phishing such as Anti-Phishing Phyllis Training Game which teaches users how to recognize phishing traps indicative of fraudulent emails.