Fighting Online Extortion

prostoalex writes "Information Week talks about those mornings, when an owner of an online business receives an e-mail message with his customer accounts and other personal information quoted, and extortionist asking for certain amount of money to be transferred to a foreign bank. Although 70% of the businesses surveyed for the article claim they never had to deal with extortion on the Internet, the article claims those small businesses who think they are not interesting for extortionists, are in for a surprise."

Comments

Finally!

[Pig Hogger]

A clued-in story submitter who submits the print link.

Bravo!

* * *

There are plenty of ways of preventing DDOS attacks, most of which, unfortunately, call for SKILLED network operators.

You are so stupid if you pay!

[earthstar]

Atleast this extortion wont leave people in a dilemma whetehr to pay or not because there simply cannot be any question of paying, whatsoever may be the data!!

This extortion isnt like conventional extortions where in you get your thing back when you pay.

The extortionist obviously would have made copied of the data, and would hav given to so many of his friends.....If someones gonna pay,would he be paying to every one of the mails asking for the same data he had paid?

LOL

Sorry, but I think the website owner has already lost the battle - Unless the extortionist get caught - provided the duplicated data doesnt isnt with anyone!

Re:Trace the money

[YankeeInExile]

1. Phish for some schmoes Citibank account.
2. Target BigWebsite.COM for extortion.
3. Use patsy's bank as a drop box.
4. Move as soon as the cash is in hand.

International Banking

[xyote]

Without it, international extortion would be impossible. If you made the banks liable no matter how far the chain went, that kind of extortion would stop, just like that.

There are analogies with the telcos enabling dial out frauds by sticking it to the customer. If the telcos and banks were responsible, they'd be real careful who they gave other people's money to.

This story is part advertisement

[Cryofan]

Like most media "news" stories.....

Dont pay.

[jellomizer]

Contact the FBI or some other from of crime investigation unit. Change all the accounts if possible. Also you should make a bunch of fake accounts before hand (As well as tightening up your computer security, and for god sake Hire an independent consultant to run security audits on your network and your code as well if possible)