This discussion below is a type of crime that has emerged within the past 3 years, and how it has impacted criminal investigations. My question is how to respond to this post.

A type of crime that has emerged within the past years and has significantly impacted criminal investigations are cyber crimes. There are several cybercrime threats in the United States. Amongst is phishing, ransomware attacks, cryptojacking, cyber-physical attacks, state-sponsored attacks, IT attacks and hacking. Hacking, however is the most prevalent form of cybercrime in the country. Hacking usually involves identity theft and credit card fraud. Identity theft is carried out to help thieves accomplish the following crimes: tax fraud, employment fraud, credit card fraud, utility fraud, bank fraud, lending fraud, and government benefits fraud. According to the US Insurance Information Institute, 1 in 4 victims of identity theft are aged 60 and older. In 2017 alone, 978 million people from 20 nations were directly affected by cybercrime. As a matter of fact, in the first six months of 2020, the ITRC traced around 540 breaches that affected almost 164 million people. Based on the study conducted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), every year, around 9 million US citizens have their identities stolen (Cybercrime: Ways to prevent identity theft).

The emergence of cyber crimes rendered local police investigators inutile in determining the person of the offender. The complexity of this crime required the coordination between local police, federal law enforcers as well as private individuals with the technical know how of tracking violators. Investigators must now possess many of the same skills as a computer forensics investigator. The cybercrime investigator is more focused on and adept at investigating crimes that use the internet as the primary attack vector.

These are the references used for this post:

Cybercrime: Ways to prevent identity theft. Ameriprise Financial. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://www.ameriprise.com/privacy-security-fraud/protect-yourself/types-of-identity-theft

The Growing Role of Technology in the Criminal Justice Field. Purdue Global. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/criminal-justice/growing-role-technology-criminal-justice/