Another Web Log

Fraud and Phishing are two different subject but mostly have the common interest. And here at this category I wanna try to dig the motive, and pattern of fraud and phishing over the internet.

Why do people seem always trying to do this, how to know them and to avoid making mistakes which at the end, will cause someone become one of the victims.

For IT workers, like me for example . Identifying a fraud or phishing email (which is the popular media for this activities) is like knowing the keys on the keyboard. We simply can recognized that some email was not sent by who they told they were. And instantly knowing that the link they provide was some fake address linked to their own server meant to steal our private information or our email passwords. Or the form they sent was trying to sent the informations somewhere else and not to where you thought it would.
So if we (the IT workers) could know these easily, why do I bothered trying to write about these stuffs ?

Well, currently I subscribed with dozen of mailing list, and some of them were non IT matters. From these mailing list I then learn that there are a lot of people which are not have the same background and job as I do. And these people are sitting ducks to become victim of these fraud and phishing activities. And it did happened to some member of those mailing list I subscribed.

So, as one of those who understand this matter and know how to avoid these kind of cybercrimes, I feel I must said something about it. I have tried to post some warning to the mailing list, but it seems that they still not ring any bell. And still, more and more victim was added to the list.

Mostly, they were victims of email phishing and lost access to their email accounts. But then it not stop there. The bad guy sent some fake email to their contact list using their name, including to the mailing list. All email was asking for money. Telling to their friends that they were in some kind of trouble and need cashes in a urgent, matter of life or dead. If the real email owner realized this and confirm, then the problem will stop there.

Could you imagine what would happen if somebody was not aware. And at the same moment could not be reached to confirm the email ? Most likely somebody else will be fall in the hole again. A different hole, but a deeper one.
And how if the email owner were careless enough to keep their online banking account information in their mailbox ? You can expect more bad things to come.

So now, I try to keep some of these kind of fraud or phishing email I received at my mailbox. Mostly were directly sent to spam folder, but 1 or 2 still did reached my inbox. I will try to use them as some example of the discussion’s subject here. Hopefully more people in this cyber world (especially for newbies) could find them useful.