Scams on the Internet

VIEWS FROM A BRIT - Manila Times
By Mike Wootton


The number of spam type e- mails in my in boxes is increasing rapidly recently. The hackers are managing to break down many more barriers. Most people know that opening attachments to unknown emails is a very risky thing to do, I’ve done it myself at my cost. What puzzles me is why do people do this sort of things? One theory put forward was that a certain hacker picked up a high paying job in Microsoft after being spotted as clearly very computer literate and able to devise and implant into innocent users computers, viruses and worms which wipe out most of the recipients hard disc memory. To say that having most of your computer data wiped out is to say the least very irritating. What satisfaction can a person get from wiping out data belonging to other unknown people ?

Spam e-mails seem to fall into three general groups; sexual aids, requests for help in transferring large sums of money, or “tips” for stock dealings. The requests for help in transferring large sums of money belonging to deceased relatives or co workers apparently originated in Nigeria, has now been adopted by others but is frankly so old that I would be surprised if there is anybody who has not experienced these type of requests or is unaware of whatever scam it is that is carried out on the respondents. Tips for stock dealings are a more recent development and I would imagine that these could be quite successful in helping to manipulate stock market prices to the benefit of the scammer. As for the sexual help spasm these are in most part laughable although no doubt they attract some buyers.

China as we all know is quite active in censoring undesirable internet sites, Falun Gong, or anything which may be considered seditious or pornographic. Is it beyond the technical competence of whoever it is who can control access and material on the Internet, to do a bit of censoring and block the time wasting and potentially very damaging hacker material? New scams will be developed continuously there is no doubt about that and I believe that there are now people in the USA who are looking at what can be done to control access to and material on the internet—that’s good I wish them every success.

The internet is a wonderful facility it is so useful in research, maintaining contacts with people and as a platform for amusement (my kids spend hours on games and children’s sites) and education. Used well it is a tremendous benefit to society but of course as with most things it is open to abuse, the scale of which is facilitated greatly by its world wide coverage. Very difficult now to imagine a life without it, but please lets do some cleaning up by trying to get some controls in place at source which would just prevent not only the hackers but also other undesirables from posting material which is clearly not in the wider public interest, and by this I mean child pornography, use by terrorists to publicise their causes, “snuff” material (films which show the actual killing of a human being) for which I just found four references on the first page of a Google search!, frauds and the like. I guess though that somebody would have the unenviable job of deciding what material is not in the wider public interest!