Internet Life

Aussies Scammed for $700 Mil

Good thing we're not down under

By Vlad Constandes, SEO News Editor

28th of February 2008, 22:06 GMT

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Falling for online scams is one thing, but putting together statistics about it is plain cruel. Who wants to bask in the other's misery when his own bank account has been emptied in the same way? Be that as it may, the number is big enough to require some professional care, and that's why the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has been instituted.

Their event in full swing by now is the Fraud Fortnight,

aimed at raising awareness and offer precautions against deceptive and seductive scams promising prizes, true love, easy money and attempts at identity theft, as Computerworld writes.

The first week is addressing the seductive scams, those promising great rewards for very little work, or even true love (there's an eyebrow raiser - do people really fall for that? Is there a jar of true love and the message delivers the spoon?). In case you agree with what I've just written, you're pretty likely to fall for one of the other schemes available. Somehow, it's in human nature to feel superior to others that have hit rock bottom because of their mistakes. Considering that you would never have followed through with the cyber criminal's attack is the first step of lowering your guard to others, better worded or presented.

Louise Sylvan pointed out the lottery scam, usually targeted at older people, that uses name and other personal information in a message to convince the recipient that he has won a lottery he never attended. To claim the prize, all that remains to be done is to send $200 in order to process and collect a win of something between $200,000 and $5 Mil, from what I've heard.

"You can see how people would think about that. Then of course they start to send not only money but also personal information which can result in potential identity fraud," Sylvan said.

I anxiously await the next week of awareness raising, the one dealing with identity fraud. There have got to be some good stories there too.

TAGS:

security | fraud | identity theft | seductive | scams

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