Tuesday, October 27, 2009

E&L: week3: Internet Frauds

The frauds take place in internet as they do in "real" life. Media writes often about people who have been deceived with the real estate transactions, travel packages and so on, there are many examples. It would be naive to believe that there are no scams in internet, because virtually they are even more easy to carry out.

Some scam examples from recent past:
Young boys sent an e-mail to Hansapank's clients, asking to renew their codecard's numbercombinations. The e-mail looked like an official request from the bank and there was some people who couldn't see the hazard behind the request. Fortunately the word of scam spread fast and the problem was solved quickly and the boys got caught.

Besides banking there are big problems in e-shopping era. I remember the big scam from last year's Beijing Olympic Games, when dozens of people ordered tickets from the website www.beijing-tickets2008.com (there were few more). Those people paid money, but, of course, didn't get any tickets.

About the scambaiting website ScamBusters.org ... I don't see there any ethical issue, actually there can be found many amusing things. But one thing I find a little ironic is that after few seconds an over-screen request appears to my face, asking to subscribe. Although the site wants to share knowledge how to prevent getting into scam scheme, they suddenly want a user to give them name and e-mail address - just after few second from opening their portal.

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