International Law

Just Say No to Fraud

Interesting article by Brian Krebs Just Say No To Work-At-Home Money Mule Scams - Security Fix

"Money mules typically are recruited via spam or targeted e-mail. The recipient is often told the potential employer found her resume on Monster.com and would he or she be interested in working a small number of hours per week to make anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars a week. The company usually represents itself as some kind of international finance operation or shipping company. In reality, most are fronts for cyber crime operations that are desperately seeking a constant stream of new recruits to help launder the proceeds of phishing scams and password-stealing computer viruses."

The comments are also interesting: here is a sample.

"@Steve -- You've hit on one of my big pet issues. If we as a nation took cyber crime as seriously as we do intellectual property violations then the current cyber crime situation would probably be less severe. Our nation's leaders build IP protections into trade treaties with other countries, yet we can't be bothered to reach for a legal edge on cyber crime law enforcement in other countries via the same methods.

We have notice and takedown laws that require ISPs hosting infringing content to take down infringing sites within a short window of time after being notified, yet we have no such requirement for malicious sites that are infecting millions with malware."

Good observation.

"The best way to prevent these things from happening is education."

I wholeheartedly agree! Problem is, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make em drink!

I see it everyday at work and via family/friends. Many just can't be bothered to be "educated". It's too much of an inconvenience or it's looked at as someone else's responsibility to protect them. Yet, they are the first ones screaming victim when something happens.

Uh, no this is just wishful thinking.

I couldn't believe someone with a Bachelors degree in accounting could be so naive. She was having some financial problems, so I'm sure that was a big part of the problem. Like one of the posters above stated the some people who get in desperate situations are easily taken advantage of or make poor moral decisions.

Well, aren't these the only people that need the help from the legal system?

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).