Nowadays identity theft and existence of programs-spies is a burning problem for people who make business in the Internet. They face different kinds of swindle. For example, when the goods never intended to be delivered are proposed in electronic shops, credit cards numbers are stolen and the cards are used by strangers for the Internet transactions more and more often (Laube 2006). Companies produce different antivirus programs to protect computers. Kaspersky Internet Security 7. 0. 1. 323, Critical Fix Panda Antivirus Firewall 2008 7. 01. 00, Bit Defender Internet Security 2008 are the most popular.
These programs have antivirus, antifishing, antispam functions, they also help to warn and prevent the unauthorized division in the network, find and prevent the threats of the programs-spies in real time and run the appendixes that hide a computer from hackers (Laube 2006). The authorities can contribute to this problem solving by producing the laws against computer attacks. Such a law exists in Germany. The law defines breaking as penetration the computer system of safety and receipt of access to the protected data, not always in combination with their stealing.
Individuals or groups of people can be called violators if they generate, spread or obtain hackers’ tools for unlawful acts. For that they can spend in prison up to 10 years. The participants of hackers’ association and specialists on safety pass judgment on a law, as many tools of breaking in can be at the same time considered to be the services of receiving the illegal access and the services of testing the computer systems on susceptibility. Antivirus organizations are sure, that the law will slow down their activity, as they continually use hackers’ tools in order to work properly (Laube 2006).
Trapping online service providers is also an effective way of trapping down criminal hackers. However, there is a conception about the secrecy of correspondence. The secrecy of correspondence or so-called secrecy of letters is a main authoritatively permitted law included in the constitutions of many European countries. It guarantees that the content of letters is never revealed and the correspondence is never read by administrations or any other third party. Therefore it is the most important official basis for the theory of correspondence privacy (Laube 2006).
The rule is noticeably completed to different means of contacts, such as telephony and electronic communications through the Internet because the constitutional laws are usually considered to cover different types of communication. However, national telecommunications privacy laws may permit officially recognized interception and monitoring of electronic communication in cases of suspicion of offense. Paper letters were left outside the lawful observation in most authorities (Laube 2006).
So, the conclusion can be made that on the whole trapping can be hardly called an ethical way, but in cases when there is a threat of a great theft where a big amount of money presents it can be allowed. Anyway the probability of using trapping will depend on correct decision of the authorities. The same can be said about trapping gang members by the police. From the point of view of moral principles it is not good, but necessary (Laube 2006). In order to prevent the identity thefts, people should get more information about the goods they are going to buy in electronic shops and the information about these shops.
They should check up addresses and telephone numbers that are given in electronic advertisement and not to trust the information about too low prices and great advantages of goods, because this is the most widespread way of trickery. Also it is necessary to have a credit card specially created for internet transactions and not to keep big amounts of money on it in order for your data not to be stolen by hackers and used for purchasing anything with your card through the Internet. (Laube 2006).
References:
1. Laube David R. and Zammuto Raymond F. (2006). “Business Driven Information Systems”. Stanford University Press