THE END!

In this weblog I tried to present some of usual real cases including Piracy,Unauthorized access, Phishing,Privacy,Defamation,Copy right,... and the perils  may create some problems for you , also some information about ways to  protect yourself from cybercrimes and being victim in cyberspace.
I hope this information would be helpful for you and help you to be success in your future work,study,job, business and life, as our future is tied to internet activities!
At the end thank you so much for your visit and your time.
Best Regards
Sahar Momenian

Detective invisible useres in Yahoo!!!!!!!!

Nowadays there are many detective sites to find the status of Yahoo Messenger users. Unfortunately some of them record the information of users have been checked including their Yahoo Messenger ID and Pictures then,disclose this information on the webpage for the other users!!!!
By this way all users of this site will be able to have unauthorize access to information of people who have been checked without their permission.
It causes checked users to receive too many unwanted messages from unknown people!!!!!

If you are one of the user of such these sites, it`s necessary for you to make sure about the site and its usage of information in order to peotect your friend`s informations from unauthorize access!
you can see one of these site trough
http://www.yinvisible.com/

A five year in prison for spreding malicious computer viruses.

In 2005,  A California resident Jeanson Anceta used “botnet” armies of compromised computers to launch destructive spam and adware attacks. His work affected computers used by the US Federal Government for National Defense!!!!!

He could earn over $107,000 from installing adware into over 400,000 computers. Jeanson also sold “botnets” to other PC users who needed them to launch Denial of Service attacks (DDOS) and email spam. He received about $3,000 for these transactions.

Result:

Jeanson James Anceta was sentenced to 5 years in prison in 2006. He then has to undergo 3 years of supervised release (which limited his Internet and computer access). He also has to pay $15,000 in restitution to the Weapons Division of the United States Naval Air Warfare Center, relinquish $58,000 of his profits from his illegal activities and forfeit his 1993 BMW. As of 2006, Jeanson’s term of sentence is the longest known for an individual who has spread malicious computer viruses.

 http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx#ixzz142nle7UW

Piracy causes $220,000 cash fine for a woman!

5 OCT 2007
A 30-year-old woman ,Jammie Thomas,  was sentenced for a file sharing case.  This lady was found responsible in sharing 24 songs from six record companies and had to to pay  $220,000 or $9250 per song as cash fine!!!!

 six music company included Record labels Sony BMG, Arista Records, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings, Capitol Records  and Warner brothers Records all claimed that Thomas downloaded 1702 songs and shared them.

After  jury investigation, it  decided Thomas’ fate. Due to significance of damages, the jury determined punitive damages on top of the $220,000!
you can find more information about how she did this crime on below link.
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/34209-single-mother-loses-big-in-music-piracy-case

 

Cybercrime and Orcut!

May 02,2010
An engineer from Mumbai , Mohammed Ali,was arrested for posting on Orcut the name and telephone number of ,Lisa Ferrera , his neighbour!
He described her as a commercial sex worker!!!!!!

Other Orkut members saw this profile and start calling her at all hours of the day asking for sex. This leads to a lot of harassment for the victim and also defames her in society.
Lisa was completely shocked when she saw it and said that"I am mentally harassed".
Then Lisa and her husband filed a complaint, Ali was arrested and has put  under police custody.
http://www.crime-research.org/news/02.05.2008/3343/

Two men were arrested due to stealing data

Sujeet Katiyar and Santosh Joshi  from Mumbai, were Two former employees of a software development company for homeopathy sites. Sujeet Katiyar was a project manager in the company. He was provided with a laptop, internet stick connection, USB data stick and so on.

They stole their employer`s data code, patent software and other data. Then they started their own company.

The cyber crime investigating cell of the Mumbai police picked up Sujeet Katiyar and Santosh Joshi  from their office in Kurla. Their crimes were: cheating, breach of trust and various other sections of Information Technology (IT) Act.

you can find more information in below link

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Cyber-crime-cell-arrests-two-men-for-stealing-data/articleshow/6790134.cms

London police arrest 19 in cybercrime online banking scam

This cybercrime ring could steal £6 million from online bank accounts. This ring was include of  fiftheen men and four women.
They hacked into thousands of computers  by using malware and then could steal money from people's online bank accounts. These attacks used a Zbot trojan called ZeuS,( it is a malware that is recently used to attack business social networking site too.)

It was not the first time people have been arrested for using the ZeuS trojan to steal money!
In November of 2009 a couple from Manchester were arrested for the same crime too. It shows that how dangerous the malware is and how many hackers are currently using  it for their evil schemes!
http://www.techeye.net/security/london-police-arrest-19-in-cybercrime-online-banking-scam

Facebook spammer had to pay $711 million

A  Las Vegas resident ,Sanford Wallace, is known "Spam King" due to his big spamming. He could access to the account of Facebook members without their permission and sent them phony wall posts and messages. A California judge convicted him for bombarding the web site with junk messages and awarded Facebook $711 million in damages against Sanford Wallace!

"We won another battle in the fight against spam," said Facebook, which announced the Oct. 29 ruling on its Web site on Friday.

Previously, Sanford was successfully sued by other online companies too;

In May ,2008, MySpace won a $230 million against Wallace for sending junk messages.

Wallace was also fined $4 million by the Federal Trade Commission in 2006 for his excessive pop-up ads.
http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/sanford-wallace-facebook-spammer-fined-711-million-2505481.html

A twenty-year prison sentence for a hacker!

Albert Gonzales With the help of some individuals could steal 90 million credit and debit cards from TJ Maxx (TJX) and other retailers! He was a U.S. Secret Service informant with 75000$ annual salary during 2005- 2008 and The Secret Service could not be aware of his activities until 2008!!!!!!
He called his scheme “Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin'.

Albert Gonzales is the first hacker in history that his sentence was twenty years in prison. In addition to his lengthy prison sentence, he also had to pay 25,000$ as cash fine!!!
You can find further information about how he did his evil scheme in below link.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/74653.aspx

Bank and Credit Card Fraud

Kenneth Flury was charged with bank fraud and conspiracy. He was  a member of a large credit-card fraud ring that was known “Shadowcrew” as It`s nickname, it included over 4,000 members. Kenneth was one of the Shadowcrew leaders.he attempted to defraud Citibank by obtaining stolen debit card accounts, PINs and other personal identifier information from account holders.
He used other individuals to get the Citibank information for him. When he obtained the data, he used it to get cash advances.
He could steal over $384,000 by this way, But $167,000 of it was then transferred to pay off the individuals who sent him the information.

This was a huge cybercrime case that the US Secret Service got involved in 2004. It was part of the “Operation Firewall” investigation.
Result:
In 2006, Kenneth Flury was convicted 32 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. He also must pay $300,000 in restitution to Citibank.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx

Illegal Computer Monitoring

Kenneth Kwak was a network security employee of the DoE (Department of Education). He gained unauthorized access to the data and obtained information from D0E computer by putting a software on his supervisor’s computer  in order to gain access to his personal files and Internet activities. After viewing his supervisor’s information, he disclosed it to other employees. This cybercrime case was investigated by the Computer Crime Investigations Division of the Department of Education Inspector General's Office.

Result
Kenneth Kwak was sentenced to 5 months in prison in 2006 with 3 months of home confinement that includes electronic monitoring. He also had to pay $40,000 back to the US Government.

http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx

Denial of Service Attacks - US vs. Jason Arabo

A Michigan resident ,Jason Arabo, with help from a 16-year-old hacker ,Sigh, attacked to his competitor`s websites in order to take down the websites. He taught that his own business will improve if he prevented people from visiting and using the services of his competitors.
About 2000 PCs were infected by some programs that allowed him to have remote access!
Sigh used "DDOS" Denial of service attack and caused crashing the computer servers of competitors,even competitor as far as Europe!

Result:
FBI investigation discovered the cybercrime and Jason Arabo was sentenced to 30 months in prison and charged with $504,495 in damages. Sigh Cheema was sentenced to 5 years in youth detention and was required to pay $32,000 in restitution.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/security-privacy/articles/70972.aspx

'Facebook crimes' are up by 346%

There was a considerable increase in Facebook crimes in Nottinghamshire between April 2008 and March 2009!
13 alleged offences in this county went up  to 58 in the following 11 months; It means that a rise of 346%.!!!!
Nottinghamshire police has said that harassment was the crime most frequently linked to the site in the past year.The site came under pressure for not doing enough to protect children.

Here there is a real case of actual bodily harm:
Peter Chapman, 33-year-old man is a serial sex attacker. He was arrested  and being jailed for raping and murdering Ashleigh Hall, 17-old-year, of Darlington, Co Durham, after befriending her on the Facebook and using a false identity!!!!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/04/02/facebook-crimes-are-up-by-346-115875-22156469/

Although facebook is responsible for protecting its members, people are more responsible to protect themselves from internet perils. I think in these cases parents should pay more attention to their childs and their communication`s networks.Also they have to give enough information about internet perils that their children may face with, and the ways they can avoid to becoming a victim in cyberspace.

cheating does not prosper!!!

Cheating in chatrooms
A 27-year-old man was arrested by police for cheating a Mumabi based software engineer through internet!!
He played the role of a woman and used a voice converter to change his voice, also forwarded a photo of a woman. After befriending through chat the engineer, provided a credit card and code to 'Renuka' (fanciful girl)  to withdraw Rs2,500 for purchasing a flight ticket to Mumbai, also the engineer even booked a room for 'Renuka'. But Renuka disappeared and enquiries revealed that Rs22,000 was withdrawn using the credit card!!!!!!

In these cases it`s really difficult to find and sue the cheaters!!!!
Also it`s your responsibility to make sure about your friends in cyberspace.
Nowadays there are many cheaters and fraudulents in chatrooms waiting for your mistake and your trust to abuse you; they can abuse you in several ways; Financial, Emotional and even Sexual abuse. So it`s essential for all of us to know completely whom we are chatting with!
DON`T TRUST EVERYONE!!!!!!!!
http://cybercrime.planetindia.net/man_arrested_in%20cyber_fraud.htm

eBay phishing scams

What is eBay?
eBay .com is probably the largest market place in the world! On eBay items are sold trough auction or direct purchases with 'BUY NOW'. You can find anything you need on it; these days it includes even real estate properties, airplanes, cars and more. There are many people running their businesses on this site and making lost of profit monthly.

The importance of information at eBay
If you run a business on eBay, your information is so important because your eBay account will be linked to your Pay pal account and will also have your credit card number and other such  important details.
Scammers are able to have your information in their hands and thereby will cause you to lose your online business or start again. Also they may buy products using your eBay account and u will be responsible for that not them!!!!!

eBay phishing email
An eBay scam usually try to distress you with a warning email subject  for example: " your account has been suspend" or "change your password" and may also be formatted to  like a legitimate email. But there are some points with which you can identify the fraud ; the email will not be addressed to you and the given link on it, will not be from the eBay.com web site.
You can see examples of eBay phishing email here

As you can see in these two examples there are two important point that show they are fraud;

1. They are not sent to a particular name or users.

2. The given link on them is not for eBay.com site

How can we protect ourselves from eBay phishing attacks?

• Do not respond immediately! Take a moment to go through the email and try to find the fraud points. 
• If it doesn't have your name or eBay username ,it's probably a scam!
• Is the link you are asked to click on from the eBay.com web site?
• Is the eBay logo included in the message?
• If you are indeed upset by a email, open a new browser window and go to the eBay.com web site instead of clicking a link from the email.

You can find more information by
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/articles/ebay_phishing_examples_advice.php

The importance of this topic (TRUST)

Previously in this weblog, I posted some real cases about computer crimes to present the negative results of BLINDLY TRUST in cyberspace, in order to give you some NOTIFICATION SIGNALS.

As we all know in today`s world most of us are doing almost all of our works (except physical works) through Internet and digital devices; from daily works like talking to each other, shopping, doing assignments to even paying the bills and making critical contract about financial cases. Hens it is essential for all of us to know and be aware of the whole environment and its situation, we are using to drive our lives on it; including:

what potential perils exist in this environment?
How they can create problems for us?
What kind of problem may be created by Internet? Financial,social,legal or ...?
What are the activities we must never do in cyberspace?
And what are the activities we must do in order to prevent these problems?
I am providing the other real cases that were occurred by Internet criminals recently and will publish them in this weblog to give you more information that you may need to protect yourselves and your rights from Internet crimes.
I will be very glad if this blog be able to create useful information for you.
Thank you
Sahar

Dozens Charged With Running Computer Crime Ring

This case is about an international computer crime that steals personal financial data from computer users and their financial institutions.

HOW?
One of the prevalent computer crimes is PHISHING; it means the act of attempting to acquire sensitive personal information dishonetly and trough deception.
In this case perpetrators usually send fraudulent e-mails to unaware computer users to phony internet sites that ask for sensitive personal data, such as Social Security numbers and financial account numbers. The tricky e-mails are designed how they seem original, legal and somehow they originated from legitimate banks, financial institutions or other companies.

Phishers also may include attachments to their e-mail that, when opened, secretly install "spyware" that can capture personal information and send it to third parties over the Internet.

The main and final goal of the criminals is to use the confidential information to empty victim bank accounts or run up credit card debt.
The fraudulent People's e-mail told recipients that, "For your security, the profile that you are using to access people's Bank Online Banking has been locked because of too many failed login attempts." It gave recipients options to unlock their accounts that included transmitting credit and debit card account numbers, Social Security numbers and personal identification codes.

AGAIN FRAUDULANT  E-MAILS!!!!!!


Most of us have experienced  to recieve fraudulent e-mails many times. One of the best way to avoid such these problems is to delete all of e-mails that we are not sure about their senders. Another way; DON`T TRUST everyone and everything, specially about financial cases. If you recieve an e-mail including  to ask your personal information or financial information NEVER reply it.

ONLINE JOB OPPORTUNITY

Good Day,
We offer a part time job on your computer.

Job Description:
We will provide you with the texts for our employees with the important information and you will correct the texts as an english speaking person and send them back to us.

Salary:
We don't have a fixed salary for this vacancy. We will pay you $7.00 for every 1Kb of the corrected text.
You will get paid at the END of each month.
Every month your salary will be different as it depends on your activity.
Example: If you correct about 5Kb of texts per day you will get over $1000.00 at the end of the month.

Money laundring schemer use electronic means to laundry dirty money and get some naive person to help them do it.
(Money laundring: changing money acquierd illegaly to legal money via illegal methods)

HOW?

They use popular jobsites to post their ads for tempting their victim, then instead of paying salary with a check, they ask for employee`s account number so they can deposit his wages or offer to wire the money.
they really do wire you small amounts of money for editing assignments to build a rapport with their victim. But little by little, they ask you do “favors” for them because, they want to expand their business. This usually requires that you handle more money for them via wire or bank transaction. You can safely assume the money is dirty, that’s why you’re handling it for them!!!!!!

HOW CAN WE AVOID BECOMING A VICTIM?

1- Most businesses have a company website not just an email address at a free service like Hotmail or Gmail. If there is no a real website for the compan you should proceed conservatively!

2- Don`t trust nameless posting; if they’re not using their company name, then something is wrong!

3- Use Google or Yahoo to research; when researching on Google or Yahoo, use the company name together with the word scam or fraud in quotations.

4- Remember that you should check everything and it needs time. Don`t be in such a rush that you forget something.

Wi-fi crime warning to businesses in Wales

Many firms don`t know they can be abused through wi-fi networks they provide!
In this case the target of internet trickers are hotels or bed-and-breakfast venues. They make a large booking and tell the owner of the venue that they will be frowrding more cash to the venue`s account than is actually requaired. They will then ask the owner to refund the excess to what the total cost of the booking is.
Finally, the owner does not receive the cash but the venue falls for it and sends cash in advance to the criminal!!!!!

Why the tricker was able to abuse wi-fi network of  the company? 
The owner of the venues trusted the client and refunded the excees cash without confirming his payment and after awhile  underestood that he has been cheated by one of the clients and due to the lack of security he could not realise that who is responsible for this crime and  was not  be able sue him.

HOW CAN WE AVOID SUCH THESE PROBLEMS?

It is necessary for firms to secure their wi-fi networks with individual key codes. By this way, each client has his own personal key and, if a criminal activity takes place, they would be aware which client has commited the crime!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south+east+wales-10639559

Introduction

In this weblog I`m going to give you some information about TRUST and its negative results may  be appeared in cyberspace. Although internet has created many advantages for its users but, it can create many difficulties too. So you should be very samart and conservative in cyberspace.
DON`T TRUST All OFFERERS!

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