od and bad. It is not the nature of technologies that make it so, but the nature of human beings. While the Internet has enabled many goods for society, i.e. distance learning, reduction of barriers to communication, and other benefits, it has also created a new breed of crime – Cyber Crime. Computer technologies now play an ubiquitous role in most people’s lives. Such technologies have also increased the potential for cyber crime, crime involving computer technologies, the Internet, and World Wide Web. As Laura E. Quarantiello (1999) maintains in Cyber Crime: How to Protect Yourself from Computer Criminals, “If we cannot avoid computers, then we have to be concerned over the possibility of becoming a victim of computer-related crime” (15).
Cyber crime involves a variety of crimes such as unauthorized use of computer-related assets, fraudulent records or data, alteration or destruction of files, theft by a number of means, pornography and others. Perhaps hackers, individuals who access unauthorized computer systems, brought widespread media attention to cyber crime more than any other group of criminals. Cyber crime is estimated to costs businesses more than $13.2 billion annually (Greenlee, 2003, 1). The efforts of businesses and law enforcement to curtail such criminal activity have typically lagged behind those of criminals. This is simply because few laws were on the books regulating Internet activity before 1995 and because of the relative newness of such crime categories as Internet auction fraud and other cyber crimes.
Beginning in 1995, a new phenomenon appeared on the Internet that has become one of the most successful Internet enterprises of all time – Internet auctions. Internet auctions, led by powerhouse eBay.com, offer buyers a “virtual flea market with an endless range of merchandise from around the world – and they give sellers a storefront from which to market everything from sports memora...