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Germany Makes Arrests In Global Phishing Scam
Monkier writes "PC World reports on a sting by German police resulting in the arrest of ten people suspected of a phishing scam. The group was targeted bank customers with emails from organizations like eBay and Deutsche Telekom. The team attached software to the emails that recorded data entered into the host computers. From the article: '"This case shows that criminal organizations are using the Internet more and more to gain enormous amounts of money with a supposedly low risk of being caught," said Crime Office President Joerg Ziercke in a statement. "The authorities face constant new challenges in the fight against computer crime where perpetrators are developing a higher degree of professionalism and specialization." The office said the suspects had led luxurious lifestyles involving expensive jewelry, cars and travel.'"
Throw away the key.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I've been scamming people for years now, but they're never gonna get me!
-Bill G.
It's "pfishing"...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Face it, the world ain't divided into little independent fiefdoms anymore. Why do we keep acting like it is a good idea to have little nations all under their own regime?
For a global order, we need a global system of governance. Lucky for us, open source is taking the lead:
http://www.metagovernment.org/
It's still young, but it's better than anything else out there.
Just a thought I had a few months ago - the higher the income tax rate, the bigger the incentive is for economic crime. As a stylized example;
In country A you earn 100,000, pay 25,000 in tax that covers your public health system, 25,000 in tax to cover your education system, spend 25,000 on other life essentials, and are left with 25,000 to spend as you like.
In country B you earn 100,000, pay 5,000 in tax that covers your public health system and 20,000 in further insurance, pay 5,000 in tax to cover your education system and 20,000 to cover your study costs (enjoying the benefit of 25,000 in each), spend 25,000 on life essentials and are left with 25,000 to spend as they like.
A criminal in country A who earns 100,000 will pay 0 in health tax but enjoy healthcare equal to 25,000, pay 0 in education tax but enjoy healthcare equal to 25,000 spend 25,000 on life essentials and have 75,000 to spend as they like.
A criminal in country B who earns 100,000 will pay 0 in health tax and 20,000 in private health insurance, pay 0 in education tax and 20,000 in education costs, spend 25,000 on life essentials and have 35,000 to spend as they like.
I would suspect it's for this reason that criminals in Europe (of the petty crime type) in my view appear to enjoy significantly more comfortable lives and more luxury than in the US.
This is an example where customers and businesses are on the same side, with governments and law enforcement actually protecting them by catching the bad guys.
I'd like to see more of this.
Of course, with eBay still sending me emails with links, telling me not to trust emails with links...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Let us say people park their cars without locks in a high crime neighborhood and the car gets stolen. May be the police should just shrug and say, "whatd'ya expect?" That will teach the losers security, automobile or computers, is at least partly their responsibility.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I realize that I'm imposing my North-american-centric, socially-unfriendly view here, but why can't people just be a little LESS trusting. These problems would go away quickly if people would just educate themselves a bit and learn that the Internet is a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and you just HAVE TO BE CAREFUL.
yeah, yeah... I'm blaming the victim...flame on
I have no pity for commercial spammers, phishers, profit-driven crackers, and other slightly techno-savvy common criminals.
But, can we also take computers away from the people who endlessly fall for these scams and make work for the rest of us? I understand that Grandmaw wants to email, but no operating system on earth can keep her safe from running corrupt executables. Maybe she needs a blackberry instead.
technical writing / development
Information wants to be free. Even unpopular information. This is yet another episode of suppressing information.
The parent makes the ideal counterpoint to the grandparent. Both are in my opinion valid arguments and deserve some thought. The question is, which society would you rather live in...
The core problem is that the client system was compromised and as a result all the SSL in the world won't help. Clueless users will always be with us. It will always be the case that if you send out enough emails with plausible links, someone will click on them.
Banks should make greater use of authentication tokens like those provided by SecurID, because they offer a secure platform that is much more difficult to compromise with fishing attacks.
Why do we keep acting like it is a good idea to have little nations all under their own regime?
Because it is?
I mean, let's try this braying poxy ass of an excuse for a "thought" in other arenas:
"Why do we keep acting like it is a good idea to let everyone run whatever operating system they like on their own computer? We need a global standard OS that everyone has to use, so all the application writers can do their work most efficiently. (And so can the virus writers, ha ha.)"
"Why do we keep acting like every state in the US should be able to make its own laws with respect to, e.g. coastal access or air quality or business law? What we need is a one national -- nay, global! -- standard that says that the rules must be exactly the same for Fresno fruit companies hiring seasonal grape pickers as for Frankfurt auto design firms hiring accountants, no matter what those silly short-sighted people who actually live and work there might think. Imagine how efficient it would be for the lawyers if one mighty emperor made all the rules!"
"Why do we keep acting like everyone should be able to pick out their own mate, live the way they want in the house they want, buy the car they want, et cetera and so forth? What's with all this damn freedom? Don't you people realize it naturally creates inefficiency? Do ants or termites act this way? No, and look at how much more effective and interesting their lives are! What we need is a global system where everyone has to follow the exact same procedure in picking a mate or buying a house, has to buy the same car, eat the same diet, et cetera and so forth. How very efficient and orderly that would be!"
Sheesh. The amazing thing about a fascist tyranny is that it hardly ever gets imposed on a people by some gang of thugs. Usually people do it themselves, gladly, in the name of security and efficiency.
Crime Office President? I thought that was George W. Bush.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Are you _sure_ they were from eBay?
A poor and sick person almost by definition can't commit economic crimes, crimes that requires some capital to get going, like phishing scams.
The argument that poor and sick people steal or rob in order to afford health care is one of the oldest and most ridiculous canards there is. Can you think of anyone, ever, anywhere who has been arrested repeatedly for, say, felony auto theft -- and it turned out he did it just to afford his cancer medicine? Neither can I.
Modern society is not Dickensian England, nor less 14th century France. If you have average intelligence and even a modest amount of self-discipline, you can make enough money to afford the bare minimum required to keep you alive and healthy, including a decent healthy diet (which may not include going out to McDonald's four times a week), and decent healthcare (which may not include liver transplants and heart stents, but will include immunizations and emergency care for car accidents).
Folks get into crime because just surviving isn't enough for them -- they want to live a life of ease and power, without having to work hard at all. And then they're not intelligent enough to realize that crime is not the clever "angle" to wealth and power that no one's thought of before.
Sounds good on paper but the only thing that would ever make it even remotely possible to implement is massive, worldwide violence on a scale never before seen which somehow only killed the people who wanted to maintain their power.
How do those people maintain their power? Through use of violence? Do they personally implement the violence, or do they have schmoes who do it for them? Now how are they going to continue to get those schmoes to act against their own interests?
And BTW what do you think we have now other than massive, worldwide violence? Governments do extreme violence against the people and each other all the time, right now, today.
Pray tell, what better idea do you have than trying to free humanity from the handful of people who rule our lives? Shall we just spend eternity doing the bidding of our betters?
You can't even imagine the possibility of overthrowing the king? I guess you would have told the U.S. Founding Fathers that they shouldn't fight against the unstoppable crown, right? Better to just let our rulers stay in charge forever.
I'm glad someone actually did something about this problem, although this is just a drop in the ocean - if even that. I got a scam email from "ebay" the other day, I onticed that it was obviously a scam, but more importantly it was a scam from within the UK (my country). I looked up and found out the guy's name who was running it (or at least the name he used to register - which he would need a credit card to buy, which has to be registered somewhere).
This would be trivially easy for the police to sort out so I looked hoping to find somewhere easy to report it, the answer I got was pretty much "we don't care, don't tell us"... So he just goes on getting away with it
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
While I allow that this Metagovernment.org project makes for an interesting intellectual exercise, without any real power, all its proclamations and laws are so much hot air. I can't even foresee this structure holding authority over the darkest corner of the neighborhood coffee shop. The top-down structure really doesn't allow it to develop spontaneously, locally. Any "government" like this can only work by claiming virtual sovereignty over the Internet (a glorified forum/chat room), and that much has been done already.
Deal with it. If you are too stupid to not get taken in, then you probably deserve it.
Trying to stop it is like trying to stop panhandling. It may be disgusting and annoying but there isn't really anything that can be done about it. Educated people know not to pass out money to people on the street. Sympathatic folks that have a good heart make sure these people keep coming back for more.
Just like the people that buy stuff from spam and click links in emails.
U.S. Director of Intelligence Michael McConnell said the surveillance program had made "significant contributions" in discovering and breaking up a suspected plot in Germany to bomb , err, rather..., Inconvenience American installations? He cited them as a reason that the U.S. Congress should reject attempts to restrict it.
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
Presumably if you defraud people for large sums but use the funds to live quietly in the suburbs, its not a crime.
Squirrel!
phisting overloards??
yikes!
"... Attached to the emails was so-called Trojan horse software which records data entered in computers using the Windows Operating System."
Fixed your typo!
HTH!
HAND!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
The poor can still commit insurance fraud, they can still commit welfare fraud (25 fake accounts) with little effort but high risk. And if you get caught, bingo free health care in prison.
The poor can also get their health poor brother or cousin or father to commit some skimming or sly on the side jobs for high cash, zero tax rewards.
You could argue banks are criminals for charging multi layer fees for 2 seconds of computer work, they still make money and profit.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.