By Farlando Diengdoh
As I read the news item today “One duped in cybercrime”, I asked myself these questions, when will we learn? Why are many being duped in cybercrime? What should the State Govt. or the Police Department do? I believe greed is one of the reasons why people fall for such hoaxes. In 2004 I received an email from a person named Franz Gander, who claims to own some billion dollars. He said he was having cancer and is dying in few months and wants to donate his wealth for the welfare of struggling country like India. He also wrote, “I believe it’s God’s will that I found your email address whom I can trust…”, so for a while I was touched and started believing this person. I replied saying that I’m willing to help his project. The next day I got an email with his picture in a hospital bed, thanking me for being willing to help him. Then the conversation continued for several days. Finally, he says, that he needs my bank account, my passport etc., to prove my identity. I remembered the movie “The Net”, of how the lady’s identity was stolen by a group of cyber criminals. I finally wrote an email, saying that, I didn’t have a bank account (which was true at the time), no passport and only a student’s ID card which would expire in a month’s time. Then, I waited for his reply. It never came.
One day I entered Franz Gander’s name on Google Search only to find millions of hits, with the same email that was first sent to me, some of them with variants and slight change of names, and it seems that it was in circulation since the earlier years. Then I realised it was just a scam. In recent years, I met a friend who was contacted the same way, and what he did was give his ID and Bank’s account no. To his shock, every time he deposited money in his account, it was reduced to zero balance. Unfortunately he realised this after he had lost several thousands. Finally he closed the account and opened a new one. It seems the fraudster used his ID to authorize the transfer of money.
Later these fraudsters invented new means of getting money from people, the most popular one being the “Lucky Draw”. My only question is why would I win a draw which I didn’t enter for? I also received an email saying I won a Lucky Draw in London (worth millions). They say that they’ll transfer the money to my account, but I need to pay the taxes which amount to $1000 nearly Rs. 50,000 at that time. But, since I was aware of such scams I told them to deduct the tax from my prize money and take 10% for helping me and send me the remaining money. Well, no surprise, they never contacted me again. Occasionally I get SMS’s about winning lotteries which I simply ignore.
With the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, twitter etc. fraudsters also perform social engineered attack. Some hackers can gain access to our accounts through social engineered hacks. Recently, the @N Twitter Account Hack was in the news. It was a social engineered attack. In this case the sole attack was the Twitter account, but it can be done on a bank account too. Another victim of a social engineered attack is Mat Honan – in his case his Google account, Twitter, and Apple ID was attacked. The Apple ID was then used to erase his phone, tablet and laptop. These sort of attacks may happen here too, and we can see how cyber criminals can destroy digital life.
There are many possible ways an attacker can earn money. It was reported that a remote town Râmnicu Vâlcea in Romania is the Cybercrime centre (http://goo.gl/AB1rX1) and the authorities can’t do anything. How do we avoid being scammed then? “Prevention is better than cure” and it does here too. It seems awareness is the only solution. The attacker could be your next door neighbour, or could be someone in Romania. And if you are sending money through Western Union Money transfer, it’s not traceable because they need just an acceptable documentary evidence of identity for the recipient. The government and the Police department should come forward and create awareness amongst the public. I believe -awareness programmes about cybercrimes should also be introduced in schools/colleges. I hope that in the future the people of Meghalaya would be more alert if they receive a message that they have won an unexpected windfall from unknown sources.
Mr. Farlando Diengdoh
Email: [email protected]