Crime and Punishment

I found this module fascinating just from the sheer amount of information I learned from it. It made me scared to go onto the Internet, especially my e-mail accounts! As I reread parts of this module I came to realize that, instead of being scared, I should consider myself fortunate to have learned this information.

First of all, I didn't realize that spam is illegal. So, the question that needs to be asked is: why do all of us get tons of spam each day? My junk mail has large amounts of e-mail dumped into it each day. I don't pay much attention to this junk mail folder so it really  doesn't have much potential to affect me. But every once in a while something catches my eye. I have resisted the temptation to click on the e-mail to open it and now, after reading this chapter, I am glad I did.  I have armed myself with new weapons to reduce the amount of spam that shows up in my  in-box and report that which I find particularly annoying, offensive, or scary.

Scams seem almost ridiculous in today's world but I imagine there's lots of people out there who fall for them. The Work-From-Home scam preys on those individuals out there who are looking for a break. Whether they are disabled or need extra cash, these scams are directed at them. The Mystery Shopper scams can be an easy way for the criminals to steal money from unsuspecting victims. I say can because there are legitimate Mystery Shopper organizations out there and they do provide a service for many businesses. That is exactly what makes it hard to determine what is phony and what is real.



I thought the Nigerian Letter scam was truly unbelievable even after reading about it both in our book and on-line. The ability to send out these poorly constructed letters, filled with grammatical and spelling errors, and still get people to respond to them is really sad. Especially when I read about how some victims responded after realizing they had been tricked into parting with substantial amounts of  their money. It is good that there have been arrests due to these scams. However, I think these arrests are just scratching the surface. The saying that applies here is "If you make a better mousetrap, the mice tend to get smarter." I think that this will just make these criminals invent new ways to steal money from victims.

I thought the section on pharming and phishing was particularly chilling. It seems that, eventually, no one will be able to avoid being a victim of these crimes. Of these two crimes I think pharming is the one that has the potential to cause more harm. Pharming is a crime that occurs when the criminal tampers with the domain name server of a business. Traffic to the website is secretly diverted to a different website. This other website looks exactly like the legitimate one and the victim thinks they are on the correct website because the browser is displaying the correct web site but, really, it's a fraudulent site. How scary is that!?!? I've often teased my husband because he likes to do our banking the old fashioned way. Well, I might have to rethink my beliefs. At least that paper check he writes out will make it to the business he sends it to and NOT a business that just looks like it. The same holds true for any banking that he does.
I thought this diagram did a good job outlining the steps that take place when a pharming scam occurs:

Phishing occurs when bulk e-mail is sent out that tries to get the potential victim to click on a link to a legitimate looking, but fake, website. The fake website then tries to get the person to give up their personal information and account passwords. The theme to these websites is that a person's account has been corrupted or is about to be closed and the business needs their information to restore the person's account to it's prior status. In thinking about both of these schemes, it seems that phishing would be more easily avoidable as long as a person knows what to look for and follows some basic rules.
I found this great article that describes phishing and pharming and the opinions of one person whose job it is to protect people from these threats on a daily basis. The link to it is :http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/First-Was-Phishing-Next-Is-Pharming/ 
I recommend reading it .

I really enjoyed finding this video on YouTube.  It's from the fine folks at Symantec and gives a funny, but informative, lesson on the scary things we can encounter on the world wide web:




So, you would think that after learning about all these schemes and scams I would be immune to anyone messing with me online. Well, the truth of the matter is that I had a phishing scam arrive in my junk in-box just last week. The scam was from someone posing as a PayPal account manager. The e-mail title said that my PayPal account had been compromised. Had I not become educated in these schemes I might have fallen for the scam. After all, it did look legitimate and how could I not respond to such a convincing title?

This message appeared above all the junk e-mail messages. It alerts readers to look for the "trusted sender" icon. Well, nothing in my junk box has a trusted sender icon....otherwise it wouldn't be junk! A legitimate message would look like this:

paypal.com which alerted me to the fact that this was a phishing scheme. I selected "Mark as Spam" and sent it on it's way to be investigated.

I consider myself, and my family, fortunate in that we haven't been victimized on-line. It seems like the number of victims is continuing to grow despite efforts from organizations  like the IC3, the FBI ,and SpamCop. It also seems like the number of criminals caught and brought to justice is tiny in comparison to the total number out there. It will take education and vigilance on the part of everyone who uses the Internet to keep themselves from becoming victims of this growing type of crime. I know that, since reading the information in this module, I'm better prepared to protect myself when I go on the Internet.