Posts Tagged ‘fraud’

I was looking for a defunct website at the Internet Archive and stumbled across a place that had squatted on the name of the site.

That page redirected to one of those fraudulent sites that pretends to scan your computer for malware so it can trick you into buying their anti-malware product. Most of the time, their product is actually more malware.

I clicked “Cancel” scan and it pretended to scan anyway while popups cascaded. One give away was that the phony scan’s progess bar moved faster than a scan from a local disk could have done, let alone a scan over the net (and I have used internet AV scans from reputable vendors such as Trend Micro and Symantec). It then told me that I had oodles of trojans, viruses, and other assorted baddies on my C: and D: drives.

This box runs Ubuntu Linux with Fluxbox. I don’t have C: and D: drives; I have sda1* (a very small boot drive) and sda3* (everything else). I don’t have a “My Documents” folder.

Here’s what it claimed to see:

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Reuters reports that, as the economy worsens all over the world, cyber crime is increasing dramatically. Read the full story here.

The crimes include old friends, such as the Nigerian scam and auction fraud, as well as credit card fraud, Ponzi schemes, and, according to sources I have read elsewhere, mortgage relief schemes.

Here is an excerpt:

Scammers in the United States comprised 66 percent of complaints referred to authorities, followed by Britain at 11 percent, Nigeria 7.5 percent, Canada 3 percent and China 1.6 percent. Within the United States, the bulk originated in California (16 percent), followed by New York and Florida.

Fraudulent sales on online auction sites like eBay Inc and classified sites like craigslist.com contributed to a 32 percent rise in the hottest area of online fraud — non-delivery of promised merchandise, the report said.

That area alone made up about 33 percent of all complaints serious enough to be referred to law enforcement.

Other important areas included investment scams such as mini-versions of the $65 billion Ponzi scheme committed by New York financier Bernard Madoff in which money from new investors is used to pay existing investors.

Talk about Oceans 11: Earlier this week, 11 people from around the world were charged with stealing tens of millions in credit and debit card numbers. By March 2007, 45.7 million customer cards were compromised.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said in a press conference “They used sophisticated computer hacking techniques that gathered enormous quantities of personal financial data.” He also said he suspects that “a lot of people are unaware that their identifying information has been comprimised”.

The breech was first identified in January 2007, and suspected to have started as early as July 2005. TJX Cos., OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Boston Market and DSW were some retailers affected.  The list of suspects could be more than 11, but officials are not saying who they have in custody.

Web browsers are just as debated as Operating Systems and Political affiliations. The Web Browser is the program that allows you to browse the web, so you want the best experience possible. And Just like Operating Systems you can also choose the web browser that you use. So which one is it? IE or Firefox. Maybe Safari? Maybe even Opera?

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