Although employed primarily for legitimate purposes, it does not discriminate between lawful and unlawful users and it is ideally suited to such criminal activity as fraud, drug trafficking and the distribution of child pornography. This figure does not account for the inestimable value of lost information in a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. The Internet Even relatively unsophisticated hackers can employ any of the thousands of hacker tools available to break into computers and to read, steal or alter information. These hackers can be members of, or solicited by, organized criminal groups. There are malicious hacker tools that will allow a remote user to control or administer a computer over the Internet without the knowledge of the computer's owner.
Products designed to hide a user's identity and vital information proliferate on the Internet.
Steganography, meanwhile, is the process of embedding files within files. Within the context of computers, text, image, voice or video files can be hidden behind an image. Users can then chat, send messages and exchange files in real time. All of these tools are accessible on the Internet at no cost. While they do much to ensure the privacy of communications between lawful users of the Internet, they appear with increasing frequency in criminal investigations.