Digitized Society: A Reflection
Some might say the crime of the 21st century will be white collar. If that is true, what will be the major types of cybercrime? How can we safeguard against it?
The FBI defines white collar crimes in a nutshell as lying, cheating and stealing where the target usually is to get or avoid something from a company or person or gain some business advantage. (2013). I agree with their perception that this type of crime is the 21st century type of crime. Based on data by the FBI, in 1999, 42% of the crimes they recorded can be considered as white collar crimes. (Barnet, 2009)
Cybercrime has become a phenomenon but crimes committed are usually hard to prove. Hacking is one of the most committed. One problem associated with hacking is that sometimes hacking is backup by the government organizations or tolerate such acts such as the case of China. Another major crime is phishing that getting information from people which usually boils down to identity theft. (KCS Group, 2012). Of course, the safest way to protect ourselves from these crimes is to get disconnected from the digital society which is like going back from thousand years back. Since, we are living in a digital world and cannot do away with going online, we can safeguard ourselves by providing several security measures like using strong passwords, encryptions, and identifying cyber vulnerabilities and addressing them. It also helps to prevent yourselves from opening sites or mails that are not familiar with you and of course controlling the information you provide online.
Cyber bullying is a serious issue in today’s schools and business. If everyone adopted and educated people on netiquette guidelines would this issue be solved? Explain.
With the numerous issues arising today relevant to cyber bullying, and assuming that everyone adopts the netiquette guidelines, this could help a lot in solving the issue but, it cannot solve if 100%. However, this is hardly achieved because it takes a lot of effort to educate every internet user with the netiquette guidelines. This becomes more difficult since no single organization controls the internet usage. For children users, constant guidance and follow-up is needed because you cannot say that if you have oriented them with proper internet usage once, they will apply it every time they go online. Teens specially, love to explore and be known, so there is a big tendency that they will go against the set guidelines to be able to create their own identities. Another issue relevant to this is that there is no way of checking if those educated people will adopt the guidelines. I consider it lucky enough if out of 100 people 10 of them adopts it. The issue on cyber bullying all boils down to the upbringing and social values of an individual. If one has the right values, then in the first place, he will not think of doing harm to other individuals.
The world is not flat for all of us. Consider a haircut, can you outsource that? What about repairs on your home? Is that service part of the "flat" world coined by Friedman? So then, what is globalization all about and how is technology one of the drivers?
The world is still round however, technology has been one of the major drivers of globalization. Through technology, business paradigms have changed dramatically, from a manual way of conducting business to a digitized one. Technology affected the rate of cultural interaction and information dissemination, making business ideas automatically go global. If one business idea arises from a remote area, then instantly and through the use of various modes of communication, that idea reaches the other side of the world. This means that you cannot stay complacent because if you have one innovation no, after two minutes, another one is trying to make innovations to your innovation. Interconnection also affects ideas of people around the world, regardless of their location. (Ehow, 2013) Because of the fast paced environment, technological devices ride side by side with it. A new invention today will probably become obsolete after six months. With technology, you can reach anywhere around the world with just the mouse in your hand.
References:
Barnet, Cynthia (2009). The Measurement of White-Collar Crime Using Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Data. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/nibrs/nibrs_wcc.pdf
Ehow.com (2013). The effects of Globalization of Ideas. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/info_8294020_effects-technology-globalization-ideas.html
FBI.GOV (2013). White Collar Crime. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/whitecollarcrime
KCS Group (2012). Cybercrime: A 21st century phenomenon which won’t go away. Retrieved from http://www.kcsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/KCS_White_Paper_LowRes.pdf
