The Law that Safeguards the Public from Cyber Attacks

For the past several decades, many of us would agree that the internet becomes an integral component of everyone’s life and businesses alike. People are using the internet for various purposes like ecommerce, social media and even as a platform for storing personal data. In fact, there are even criminal activity that is geared on the internet such as hacking, cybercrimes and the likes.

At Least Know how to Protect Yourself

If you don’t want to be the next victim of such, it will be smart if you would at least the basics on how email hacking works. This way, you can have a first line of defense on how not to be victimized by these cyber attacks.

And whether you believe it or not, criminal activity that is focused at this kind of activity has significantly increased for the last decades. There have been unauthorized access on computer systems which is otherwise known as hacking. It is described as criminal action whereby someone is using a computer to gain access to private data without getting permission from the owner.

If proven with the act and caught, the person can face serious penalties and long jail time.

Protection from Everyone

As a matter of fact, the Congress had pass CFAA or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986. Here, the act is prohibiting any unauthorized access to anyone’s computer. This is regardless if it is for a private individual, a known personality or the government. Under federal law, these unauthorized activities are seeking to get information about:

  • Financial information
  • Data from government agency or department
  • Info from protected computer with an intent to defraud
  • Cause transmission of a program, code or information from an encrypted system
  • Access a computer and bring virus or damage to it

Wordings used by CFAA are vague in which prosecutors have been able to abuse the law to convict offenders. And under this act, anyone who is caught into any hacking related activities will be penalized with high fines and can be sentenced for up to a decade of jail time.

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