A Research On Criminal Law Regulations Of Using Phishing To Steal Credit Card Details And Make Money Transfer

In China,our citizens are suffering from this serious danger of telecommunications fraud---phishing.Telecom fraud is everywhere and updates fast.It threatens personal property rights and civil privacy rights.Besides,it can cause serious problems to the safety of the society.Compared with other types of telecom fraud,phishing has its unique features,which will cause serious trouble to all commercial actions based on online financial services.The crime of phishing in China is mainly an attempt to steal the identity of the online bank account of individuals(credit card information)and log on to the real online bank to make a transfer.Our criminal laws lacks of detailed regulation in phishing.The most urgent threat that we should deal with is that judges can made different judgments on phishing frauds cases.In Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China,there are three familiar crimes can be used to interpret phishing.Theft,credit card fraud and fraud are the three common existing judgments for phishing.This article will analyze phishing from three parts.First,the author makes it clear that the qualitative nature of phishing is identity theft.Phishing is an attempt to obtain personal information such as user names,passwords and credit card details.Even though the criminals do not steal the credit card itself,they already have all necessary information they need to make a fraud transfer.That means credit cards information is a completely replacement of credit card itself in all commercial transactions based on electronic payment services.Second,this article discusses the differences between fraud and theft.According to the Amendment to Criminal Law,relevant Judicial Interpretations,"Fraudulent use of other people's credit card" is a criminal action under credit card fraud.On the other hand,Article 196(3)of Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China states that “Whoever steals a credit card and uses it shall be convicted and punished” under theft.Therefore,some phishing websites steal victims' credit cards information and transfer money through the internet should be convicted under theft.Finally,the author makes her conclusion that phishing websites steal victims' credit cards information then make money transfer should be convicted under theft.Besides,if this action disrupts the normal operation of radio communication and causes serious consequence at the same time,the criminals should be sentenced under one chosen crime.The purpose of the article is to draw people's attention to phishing.We cannot simply conclude credit card phishing as fraud.The more we know about phishing,the easier we can prevent phishing crimes.