Serious money to be made from cyber crime

According to Spencer Kelly from the Click on the BBC hacking is big business in Russia and other countries in the Eastern Europe. He stated that organised crime gangs are operating profitable scams that involve programmers writing malicious software and viruses. According to a Russian hacker you may create a great virus, but that doesn't make you a fortune on its own. But if someone could buy it for a couple of hundred dollars. Then convert the infected traffic into cash your earnings would soar. The hacker stated that hackers achieved this by manipulating browser homepages and changing search results to get users to click on their sites and sign up for services.

These days Hackers advertise and sell their products in chat rooms and web forums etc. A keylogger that records passwords as they are typed sells on average for about US$23 around about K60 (if the exchange rate is around about 0.39 like today's interest rate).

The scary thing is any person who has access to the web could purchase these tools, and with a bit of tech knowledge could create a major crime spree. This got me thinking are big banks like the Bank of South Pacific Ltd (BSP) doing enough to protect against cyber crime. For example should BSP have a duty of care to advise all of its customers that are getting the new BSP Visa Debt cards, how they can protect against cyber crime if they are using their BSP Visa Debt cards online. I certainly think so that banks like BSP have a duty of care. The use of Visa Debt cards with a major bank like BSP in Papua New Guinea is a new concept in PNG. So there should be some protection provided by the vendor to help the inexperienced online shoppers, by protection I mean an online shopping awareness campaign. For example for someone to put you into serious financial problems all they need off you is four basic pieces of information e.g. name, address, debit/credit card number, and the pin on the back of your credit card.

So this leads me to the next question that came to mind. Is cyber crime in Papua New Guinea going to increase now that a large number of Papua New Guinea's have access to debt cards that can be used online? I really think that it will, because at the moment Papua New Guinean's aren't tech savy enough to protect themselves against cyber crime. For example a well educated reporter friend of mine came to me a few weeks ago telling me how they had just won some lottery overseas and if I could check the email address for them before he was about to send of all of his personal details to these con artist that had sent him the email. So I guess what I am really trying to say is we need some good basic rules of thumb to follow, to prevent Papua New Guinean's from getting conned. Here are some tips to prevent a con:

• If it seems to good to be true it probably is.
• Don't give out your debt card/credit card details even if someone calls up and says they are from your bank
  
• Don't read unsolicated emails from people that you don't know
• Make sure if you are shopping online that the website is a secure website e.g. look in the browser window where the address is and check if it is "https" at the front
• If you use a debt card to shop online only have the amount that you need to do the purchase in the card or have low credit card limit
  
• If you get an email from some lottery company that you don't know and have never played it is a scam delete it straight away
• Don't email your personal details to people that you don't know

Wantoks we already have enough con artist in Papua New Guinea but once Cyber crime hits it is going to be sad day indeed. Part of the reason being is that currently not enough is being done to prevent against it, and PNG's police force are not equiped for it.