38
people charged with Internet crime
are members of global organized
crime,
says
US government charged 38 people with identity theft who were able to victimize as much as thousands of individuals from several countries. The 38 Internet criminals stole Social Security identification numbers, credit card data and other personal information that would give them access on the financial sources of the victims.
The said scam is actually part of the global crime ring based in Romania. People involved are 19 Romanians and the other half are coming from United States, Pakistan, Portugal and Canada. This means that the crime is not only local but global threat since it involves Internet.
"Criminals who exploit the power and convenience of the Internet do not recognize national borders; therefore our efforts to prevent their attacks cannot end at our borders either," thus said, Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Filip. He was the one who declared the crime charges against the 38 people at Bucharest (Southern Romania).
This online fraud is known as phishing. Phishing is done through sending emails from seemingly credible senders such as well-known bank institution or online payment processing service for online vendors and many others. Example is the PayPal which was used by the "phishers" as bait in the mid 2000 to allure the Internet users, specifically PayPal customers. The phishers used the capital letter 'I' (as India) instead of small letter 'l' (as in lima) so that "paypai.com" would textually look the same with paypal by having "paypaI.com." Phishers usually play on the textual aspect of a credible company website in deceiving the Internet users.
The content of the email message being sent by the phishers usually contains a link or links leading to a website of a credible online financial company website that is actually fake. The fake website contains online form that requires the visitor to fill in with their personal information, including sensitive data such as that on credit card information. This also takes in other method because the latter is easily detected and would likely drive fewer victims since people who are not smart enough or easily fooled in the Internet are getting extinct. Since there is a growing awareness of such fraud, phishers use Spyware instead. It is sent as an email attachment that automatically gathers the needed data to access personal financial accounts when clicked by the unheeding Internet user.
According to the anti-organized internet crime group, the only key to prevent one from being a prey is to be cautious on the messages flooding in the inbox. The more tempting the header sounds, the more likely that it comes from the phishers. Avoid bait to avoid getting "phished."
