Combating crime in international electronic commerce

Abstract

Electronic commerce, broadly defined as doing business online, has with the advent of the Internet and more importantly of the World Wide Web, developed at an unanticipated speed. Electronic transactions have been said to be very convenient, fast and limitless. This limitless character of electronic commerce does not only have advantages but also a number of disadvantages. E-commerce has opened very wide doors to criminals who take advantage of both the advancement in technology and the cross-border nature of the Internet to deceive other people. Over the years there have been attempts to find solutions to the increasing problem of cybercrime in general, and crime in international electronic commerce (IEC) in particular. To date, even though techniques have been developed, laws have been enacted and some initiatives are still ongoing, there seems to be much more to do in order to achieve a successful fight against online crime. E-commerce has been presented as an aspect of the broad cyber universe and the solutions so far provided are meant for cybercrime in general. Thus, it appears that e-commerce and more precisely crime in IEC is an aspect that should be given consideration to in the sense that specific laws need to be passed on the issue.