New and Diverse tactics of Internet Criminals

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Will you help your friends when they are in need and ask you for helps? I guess most of us would help them whenever we can and will try our very best to help them as they are our friends. It is a very common characteristic and value which most of the human has. Sadly, those Internet criminals out there see it as a weakness of human being and start to take advantage of it to swindle others’ money. Previously in our posts, we were talking about how scammers or criminals approach you with an identity of a stranger who you are not close to. However, the ways they approach their ‘preys’ is no longer the same.

On the 16th March 2010, CNN releases Internet fraud-related news in CNNMoney.com talking about the increasing of the Internet fraud cases and some new tactics used by criminals in committing Internet frauds. Nowadays, scammers become more and more savvy and cunning as they come out with new ways to commit crimes through Internet.

"We're seeing that the criminals are using new and diverse tactics to reach out to people," Kane said. "They'll take over your account and then use your identity to ask money from friends for an emergency. Instead of coming from a stranger, it's coming from someone who is supposedly your friend." said John Kane, manager of research for the Internal Crime Complaint Center.

Now, as you can see, even the criminals are reaching out to you through the social networking sites! Perhaps it is Facebook? Twitter? Flikr or Friendster? What is more scary is that they hack into your account and use your identity to pretend as you to cheat money from your friends in your friend list without you knowledge. In the same way, they can also hack into your friend’s account and pretend as your friend to ask for financial assistance.
Imagine this, if one day, your friend in facebook who claims that he or she is having an emergency which need RM5000. You are the ONLY person that she/he trusts, so in this critical time she can’t believe anyone but YOU to help her. What will you do? Will you help her? Sometimes, in this situation, we can’t think rationally, hence, the tendency of us helping our ‘friend’ is high.

Therefore, no matter how; the first thing you should do is to calm down and think what to do next after you receive such a message from your friend who asking for money. Then, call your friend to confirm that the message is sent by your friend. If your friend insisted that do not contact her through phone, then you should be skeptical. Anyway, you must get your friends clarify everything by themselves.
Besides, to avoid your account from being hacked and taken over, create a stronger password using alpha-numerical characters. Once you get to know that your account is being hacked, you should report the case to the social networking site host and then inform all your friends that your account is being hacked so that they will not be the victims of the hacker.

References: Aaron Smith, Nigerian prince still wants your money, CNNMoney.com [Online], Retrieved on 24th March 2010, URL: http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/16/news/economy/internet_fraud_fbi/index.htm

Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud( 419 Fraud)

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Advance fee fraud is commonly known as where an investor is asked to pay money in advance before receiving any stocks, goods or warrants in order for the deal to go through. The fee can be on many forms either by commission, regulatory fee, or even tax. Advance fee scheme normally target investors who have already purchased their goods on unsecure web sites, or through a ‘Middle Man’ website that will collect information’s about your purchasing and requires you to pay an advance fee.

The most commonly advance fee fraud is the ‘Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud’. In this scheme there will be someone pretending to be a Nigerian officer, a civil servant or a business person who will email you informing individuals to help transfer money to a Nigerian Bank account reason being to help individuals and companies to earn mutual benefits, help move millions of dollars out from the country in exchange of a higher commission and profits. They will ask about your companies letter head, address, telephone number and will also strictly inform you not to inform any officials claiming its private and confidential between both parties. If you are not careful and respond to these scheme and blindly send them your companies’ letter head, bank account number they are able to rob the victim’s bank by taking money, swamping visas or even sell to other similar criminals.

This scheme has rise tremendously therefore the US government of The U.S Secret Service have came up with laws to combat these fraud by setting up a special task force dedicating to only Nigerian Advance Fee Frauds.

Therefore be careful while opening and responding to an email. Read the content of the email properly before signing up and agreeing to something. Of you are not too sure about the content and hesitating about the truthfulness of the content don’t ignore the email by not responding or simply by deleting it. Go with your instincts.

References: U.S Securities and Exchange Commission, “Advance Fee Fraud” Schemes, Modified on January 29, 2008.

URL: http://www.sec.gov/answers/nigeria.htm

References: United States Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law and Enforcement Affairs, Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud,

URL: http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/naffpub.pdf

Poll Result

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It’s time for us to reveal the poll result for the last week which is about a spyware. So this question we have asked last week “Do you know what the spyware is?” There are 3 options for this question but only one option is empty vote. The shop that is empty is option 1 that says “No. Don't know what that is and haven’t even heard about it before”. This 0% shows that there is none of them that don’t know what spy ware is. As we know most of the people nowadays should know about what spyware because people nowadays use to online browsing on internet, working, studying and we are often remind through email, by friends or family to be careful of spyware that attacks our computer system. Therefore, it is impossible none of them never even heard before what spyware is about.

Besides that based on the poll result, we could also see that up to 75% of the people chose option 3 where it indicates that they had heard about it before but don’t really know what it is. This shows that many people are aware of the existence of spyware but they did not take initiative to in detail searching the details about spyware. Therefore some of them only know Spyware is a type virus that attacks our computers or some only knows about it when their computers have problems however they did not know what the real meaning about it and how it affects as well as how the spyware manage get in our computer. It might because people nowadays are too busy with their work and daily routine so since this spyware is not even consider important in part of their life they will not spend time to know so detail about it. When their computers have problem they will just send to the computer technical shop to work it out.

Lastly, actually only a 25% of them really understand and know what is the meaning of spyware really is. This is where the participants choose 2nd option which is “Yes. I know about it and have it on my computer”. These people maybe the ones that really have high interest towards computer programs and details