Phishing
The Oxford pocket dictionary defines phishing as the activity of defrauding an online account holder of financial information by posing as a legitimate company. This is what phishing is known for now in today’s internet driven world but it was not always the case. Phishing actually predates computers. Some people did it over the phone for years and they called it social engineering.
So why would someone think of phishing some one? There is a simple reason: to exploit people. These people are commonly known as scam artists. What these phishers normally do is send out millions of scam emails posing as something or someone who they are not. Normally they hope for a few people who received the email to respond to them by clicking the fake website and provide them with financial and or personal information. Also, anyone who has an email address is at risk of being phished. People can increase their risk of being targeted if their email is posted on a forum or website. The people phishing can also get many more email addresses by using a spider. A spider is something that searches through many websites and saves an innumerable number of email addresses, every one it can find. So in a nut shell, phishing is very profitable for criminals because, they can attain millions of email addresses and potentially set them up for an attack at relatively no cost to themselves (Beal, 2006).
There are some key factors and elements that one needs to help recognize if they are being phished. This scam often has three key elements or factors that will come about when someone is planning an attack. First, when checking your email and look to see who the email is sent from. It will often be from a legitimate company’s address. If the email address looks suspicious then be wary, but this is an easy obstacle for phishers to climb over. It is very quick and easy for someone to change the “from field” in most email clients to trick the person receiving the emails. Second, the email almost always will contain very similar images or logos that have been copied off of the real company’s website. Third, upon opening the email, it will have a link along with text saying you should click the following link to make sure the personal information is correct. When trying to determine if you are part of a phishing experiment, there are many little things you might want to notice.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 many New Yorkers and New Jerseyians were looking for a safe haven away from the turmoil of the aftermath. Many sought this refuge in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. Touting a short drive to New York City, many local home construction companies saw this as an opportunity to sell houses and turn a profit. Many of these companies were reputable and upstanding businesses that produced a quality product at a market ready price. However, some of these companies were not so upstanding and as a result many unsuspecting homeowners were scammed out of thousands of dollars and just as many ended up in foreclosure. It became very clear early on that something was not right with many of the new home transactions involving a company called Rain Tree Homes, and so the Y-Rent scam slowly unfolded.
Solicitation is the crime of trying to get someone else to commit a crime. An example of this is paying someone to kill your significant
Identity theft has been a major issue of privacy and fraud. In the data breach analysis from the Identity Theft Resource Center (2013), the number of data breaches from the year 2005 to 2012 increased. In 2012, there had been 49% where the data breach exposed people Social Security Number. The data breach of 2012 has a rate of 27.4% caused by hackers. These breaches were commonly from 36.4% businesses and 34.7% health and medical (Identity Theft Resource Center 2013). The number of identity theft varies from physical possession to digital possession. At least one-fifth of trash cans contains papers listing people’s credit card number and personal information. People that throw away their trash mails contain much personal information that is useful to steal someone's identity (Davis, 2002). Technology becomes a need where people use it daily and as a result it has also become a use for identity theft as well. Throughout the years as technology develops so does identity theft. This paper shows the types, methods and technique used for identity theft, and it also examines possible risk of identity theft from current technology.
A deception is a form of a lie. Scams are similar to deception in the way that each are lies and are used to achieve the same goal. They are used to gain something about an individual whether it is trust, money information of some kind or simply
Social Engineering: What It Is and How to Help Protect Yourself. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/socialengineering-whatis.aspx
There is currently a huge growing number of criminals that now do greater and more widespread damage to their victims without ever meeting them. Identity theft surfaced in the early 1990s and turned peoples everyday transactions into a data gathering game. Bits of personal information such as bankcards, credit card accounts, income, social security numbers or just someone name, address, and phone numbers are now collected and could be used illegally by these individuals without anyone’s knowledge.
The Internet plays the biggest role in identity theft. On the Internet, a thief can hide from detection while stealing peoples’ identities from their homes, being able to steal peoples’ information one by one “then disappearing into another identity,” (Vacca 60). Internet fraud consists of two phases. The first being spoofing where a fake site is set up made to look like the real thing. Once that is completed the second phase, phishing, begins. This usually starts with an email that uses the
Being involved socially online can open many doors to hackers and scammers. Posting too much information online can be a way for scammers to steal information.
Nowadays television and the advertising displayed in it is a part of everyday life in most households. What many people do not know is that television in many ways is bad. Numerous articles have been written on this. Many surveys and books have been written on this subject as well. The ads in television are what are especially bad. Some television ads are misleading.
Computer hackers in today's world are becoming more intelligent. They are realizing that people are constantly developing more hack-proof systems. This presents the hackers with a bigger challenge and a bigger thrill. The government is realizing this and is working on making harsher laws to, hopefully, scare the potential hackers. With the increase in hacking and hacker intelligence, governmental regulation of cyberspace hasn't abolished the fact that it's nearly impossible to bring a hacker to justice.
University of California, Berkeley, n.d. Web. The Web. The Web. 25 Jan. 2014. What is “online fraud”?
One of the things though is that we don’t only see schemes on social networks it could happen on any site that requires you to share information. Things like online shopping require you to share some of your personal information along with your bank information so if the site doesn’t have a strong security system it can have consequences. There are intelligent hacker1s and scammers that can breach the security system and steal your bank information. Three simple steps such as typing your name, birthdate, and zip code is more than enough for someone to try and steal your identity or use your information to their advantage. Theodore Claypoole in “Privacy and Social Media” said how the United States is trying its best to pass laws and keep up to date with new software in order to help protect people from falling into the realms of cyber criminals (Privacy and Social Media). As time passes technology is advancing and sharing our information is becoming easier, so it’s necessary for our security software to be up to
Authentication: The process of proving one's identity. (The primary forms of host-to-host authentication on the Internet today are name-based or address-based, both of which are notoriously weak.)
Cybercrime and social media are two major global problems that impact society. Today, are more accessible to computers and the Internet than in years prior. Nonetheless, perpetrators attack social media with illegal activity to facilitate their crime. There are different strategies or practices by various countries to combat cybercrime. However, identity theft, cyberbullying and phishing are three major type of cybercrimes which are impacting social networking websites.
Identity Theft Identity theft happens when someone steals and uses another person’s identity to obtain resources in that persons name. This is an issue that has been going on for years. The difference today is technology. Technology has made it easier for identities of people to get stolen. Reasons behind this varies, some do it for political, financial, or social gain.There are different types of identity theft such as financial fraud, criminal activities, and computer and cyber crimes. You cannot protect yourself fully from identity theft, but there are ways to reduce your risk. According to Peter Katel, Nearly 10 million consumers are affected annually by lost or stolen data at a cost to the economy of $53 billion. Moreover, victims spend almost 300 million hours a year trying to clear their names and re-establish good credit ratings. Today’s advancement in technology makes identity theft even easier to accomplish. These days, a lot of identity verification happens with computers. Computers are fast at computation but not very good at judgment, and can be tricked. A lot of authentication happens online, with only a small amount of information: user ID, password, birth date, Social Security number, and so on. Anyone who gets that information can impersonate you to a computer, which doesn't know any better. It has become convenient for these people to do so, they can collect data from their own mobile smart phone, tablets, laptops and so on. Free wifi is available in a lot of public places. They are provided by cafes, restaurants, etc and serve as excellent places for harvesting passwords. Unprotected wifi networks, especially in public places, are most certainly a threat. This is because you are connecting to a network without k...