Enticing Emails

In this post, I want to explain about one of the most common form of cyber crime.In this type of cyber crime , generally an email is send to the victim requesting to help for transferring large amount of money.Then the scammer requests money to pay for costs of transformation. As this money is send to scammer he/ she will disappear or may continue to fool the victim with some excuses such as may says a problem occurred during transformation that needs more money.

Another side of this crime is scammers aim to identify confidential information about their victim and use these information in another fraudulent activities in their names.It is a very dangerous situation for individuals and also firms. When criminals identified about ID numbers, bank accounts and addresses of individuals they can use it for opening accounts in the other's name, steal money and other kinds of crimes.The result of this kind of crime for victim could be bankrupt, or sentenced , prisoned and blacklisted.

So it is necessary to know about this kind of cyber crime in order to protect yourself from scammers.Be careful when use internet for transferring money and do not care and reply for any suspected email.

Related to this topic I read a news with this title"Australians tricked out of $70m in scams". The spokesman of Consumer watchdog Choice said "Electronic goods buyers are being warned to be aware of fake customs letters requesting payment for breaching pornography laws relating to pornography purportedly found on cameras and phones."

The First Recorded Cybercrime

It is interesting to know the first cyber crime related to the abacus which happened in 1820! Abacus which is the earliest and simplest form of computer ,was used about 3500 B.C in some parts of the world such as China.

Joseph- Marie Jacquard who had a textile manufacture in France introduced the loom.This device threatened employees in the firm whom decided to sabotage in order to discourage Jacquard from further use of the loom. This act considered as the first cyber crime in the world.

Copyright Protection in US

No Electronic Theft (NET) Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1997. The NET Act gives copyright protection for computer content and enforces sanctions when infringement is committed for private financial gain or by reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of copyrighted works having $1,000 or mote in retail value.

Another related law is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).It grants ISPs protection from acts of user infringement .This law enacted in 1998.DMCA also criminalizes the circumvention of software protections and the development or distribution of circumvention products.

United States Patent And Trademark Office

United states Patent And Trademark Office or briefly UNPTO is an agency in America which has responsibility to issue patent for inventors and register for product's trademark.This agency does not work alone.It has close relationship and cooperation with European Patent Office (EPO) and Japan Patent Office(JPO). At the end of year 2009 this agency had about 9,000 employees, including more than 6,000 patent examiner and about 400 trade examining attorney.Patent examiners are mostly scientists and engineers without law degree and trademark examiners are licensed by attorney.It is also interesting to know the first patent in US was issued in 1790 for making Pot ash and Pearl ash by Samuel Hopkins and president George Washington signed it at that time.

Since 2004 inventors or their atterony can register online by compliting a PDF form from its website.USPO dicided to increase carefully reviews applications for software-related protection.

References of statistics:

http://www.wikipedia.org/

Today all my MBA classmates attended in a lecture with was about Cyber law and Privacy Regulation. The title of this lecture was exactly Selected Privacy and Security Issues in Information Technology - From the Lens of Laws, Regulation and Politics.The lecturer, Mr.Noriswadi Ismail ,spoke about data protection and privacy issues and explained these subjects with some examples such as CCTV in the London underground, CTOS and HSBC.During the speech he suggested us to read a book .

At the end of this speech attenders discussed about the difficulty of using Western model of privacy regulations in developing countries.Culture was mentioned as a most important problem to implement any European and US rules in other countries especially in Asia.

What is the responsibility of CI3?

I read a news with this title : The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) celebrated its tenth anniversary yesterday.So I was curious to know about this organization more. These are some information that I found.

From 2000 , the year this organization established, until now about 1.5 million cyber crime and child pornography recorded and investigated.

The mission of this organization is to receive, develop and investigate criminal complaints in order to investigate in cyber crime area faster.Also IC3 works as a partnership between NW3C (National White Collar Crime Center)and Federal Bureau of Investigation and provide facility for cyber crime's victims to report any suspected or actual computer crime. "this partnership has increased law enforcement's ability to collect,analyze and refer Internet crime complaints to our domestic and international law enforcement partners " said Bill Hinerman, FBI Unit Chief for IC3.

For requesting any help a victim can go to the IC3 website and fill a form which consist of why, when and how you believe you were defrauded and other details.

IC3 web address is www.ci3.gov/default.aspx

Reference of news:

http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/

TRUSTe

Web site needs help to create trust for their users. To do so an independent and non profit privacy initiative called TRUSTe was established.TRUSTe will give any web site its logo and seal if that website accept all its philosophies. Also sites must publish the following information on their sites to obtain the TRUSTe logo.

1- What personal information is being gathered by your site?

2- Who is gathering the date?

3- How the date will be used?

4- With whom the date Will be shared?

5- Users have the choice regarding to gathering, use and distribution of their data.

6- the site must protect users collected data such as credit card from loss or misuse

7- users must have the ability to update or correct information

It is obvious TRUSTe is not the only organization which provide such facilities for websites.

For more information look at http://www.truste.org/

Opt-In Vs Opt-Out

The opt-in means that users give permission to the company to send commercial email and ads to them or to share their information to any other seller that has agreement with the first sellers.For activating opt-in users check a box on web and enter their email addresses.

The opt-out has almost the same meaning as opt-in but the only difference is users have to uncheck the box on a web to hinder being in the firms email list and sending emails or giving others their information.

Criticises complain about this practice because mostly users are not aware about it and may be surprised when receiving email.

Although this practice is not fair and hurt users privacy but marketers like to use it because these techniques are part of traditional marketing strategy which is called permission marketing (meaning turning strangers into customers.)

Net Creation's Post Master Direct is a list broker and has 50 million opt-in names and email addresses ,13 million of them live outside of US.Brokers rent lists to other companies.(www.netcreations.com)

Credit Card Number Theft

A credit card number could be stolen in three different places on the Internet. It could be stolen from a users home or business computer, it could be stolen in transit from the users computer to the sellers web site or it could be stolen once it reaches the sellers site.

how likely is each of these ways?

1- Stolen from the users computer : Unlikely unless users store credit card numbers on their computers .

2- Stolen in transit:Almost impossible and in fact this situation has never been reported as long as vendors use a secure Internet connection(http).Encryption algorithms make this possibility remote.

3- Stolen at the merchants site:Probably the most user acceptable concern given the following possibilities

the merchant may be cheater

the merchant may be honest but have a dishonest employee

the merchant may be honest but fails to protect its database of credit card numbers from hackers .

So one of the most important way for transaction security is using encryption system.