Crimes in Cyber Age and its Response by Indian Judiciary

Abstract

The advent of the third millennium has brought in an era of information society. The new era is the result of rapid changes brought about by the new technology and the cyber world. Obviously the information society offers vast scope and opportunities to human beings to identify information, to evaluate information, and to exchange information for the benefits of the citizens the world over. The in formation technology provides for a new environment, new work culture, new business links and trading networks. It allows information and knowledge based work to be located anywhere. It is virtually transforming and revolutionizing the world. The information technology is a double-edged sword, consistently presenting us with benefits and disadvantages. The increasing opportunities for productivities, efficiency and worldwide communications brought additional users in droves. Today, die internet is a utility, analogous to the electric company and '.com' has become a household expression. The reliability and availability of the internet are critical operational considerations. Activities that threaten these attributes like spamming, spoofing, etc, have grave impacts on its user community. Any illegal act, for which knowledge of computer technology is essential for its perpetration, investigation, or prosecution, is known as cyber crime. Among the various problems emerging out of the internet are the menace of hackers, cyber terrorism, spamming, Trojan horse attacks, denial of service attacks, pornography, cyber stalking etc. Through this paper the researcher will try to study the problem of cyber stalking, cyber defamation, various types of data theft and the laws relating to it. An effort is also made to look into the loopholes of the Information Technology Act, in addition to this the researcher will also try to recommend some suggestions to fight these dangerous problems, with the response of Indian judiciary to it.