United Against Cyber Crime
By Coenraad De Beer

Cyber Crime or Cyberspace crime is now a major issue but why are people reluctant to report spam to the abuse departments of well-known e-mail and hosting service providers? Many people don’t know that such departments exist and other are fed up with the ignorant approach of these departments towards reports from the public. What’s the use of an abuse department if it doesn’t do anything about the problems and abuse reported to it? But it is not only members of the public who experience these frustrations, anti-cyber-crime organisations have the same problem. These abuse departments eventually decide whether it is necessary to suspend the services of the guilty party or not, no matter how much evidence you provide to support your claim.

It revolves all around money, even the free services generate revenue for these companies. Free web site hosting normally involves adds of the hosting company displayed on the web site. Web sites involved in spamming activities bring in a lot of visitors which means the ads of the hosting company also gets exposure. Why would they want to terminate a web site that brings them a lot of revenue? This means that they are not enforcing their own terms of service, or you can even say their terms of service are only applicable to those who abuse the services without generating any revenue for the company. The problem becomes even worse when the abusing party pays for the services. Why would they want to cancel the account of a loyal client, it means revenue loss for them? What these companies don’t understand is that they are making themselves less popular by being so reluctant to take action against these abusers and they will eventually only attract the criminals, effectively making them accomplices to these criminal activities. I believe most world-class companies will stare bankruptcy in the face if they terminate the accounts of all the spammers and unethical companies making use, or I should rather say, abusing their services.

Money is also the stumbling block for collaboration between cyber crime fighters. A web site owner will not want to refer visitors to a partner’s web site without getting something in return. This is understandable to some extent because many anti-cyber-crime organisations provide their services free of charge and generate revenue mainly through advertisements. Without visitors they cannot make money from the ads displayed on their site. But is this enough reason to refuse a helping hand from a partner? A united force is much stronger than a divided force. The scammers love the fact that law enforcement agencies are not working together with anti-cyber-crime organisations to battle cyber crime. Spammers love it when e-mail and hosting service providers do not respond to the reports from anti-cyber-crime organisations and complaints from the public. Cyber criminals are laughing out loud at the divided force against cyber crime, battling to keep their heads above the flood of spam and scams reported to them on a daily basis.

The cyber criminals are constantly one step ahead of cyber law enforcement, it is time we turn the tides and stand united against cyber crime.

About the Author
Coenraad is webmaster and founder of Cyber Top Cops, leaders in Internet security, prevention of online fraud and educating users about online scams and malicious software. Visit Cyber Top Cops Articles: The Latest In Cyber Security for more articles related to cyber security.

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A Short Synopsis Of Cybercrime
By Emily Gable

To many involved in criminal dense, cyber crime is the bane of the 21st Century. It accounts for millions in ill-gotten earnings each year. Vast criminal networks spanning the global are now actively involved in cyber crimes of one sort or another. The potential for future earnings is almost unlimited and the relatively safety that the Internet provider cyber criminals means that it is extremely hard to catch. Victims mount up. However, things were not always this way.

In the early days of cyber crime the world of cyber crime was seen as a rather harmless prank by computer geeks showing off how much they knew about the working of computer networks. It was tantamount to a dare, you say it cannot be done and we will show you how it can. Relatively little harm was intended and criminal defense lawyers did not have their work cut-out showing this. Indeed, few if any specific criminal laws were on the statutes that regulated cyber crimes in the early days and most of the criminal defenses were bog-standard.

As times changed, so did the nature of the cyber crime. More technological advances and cheaper access to hardware and software meant that the Internet became a domain anyone could access. More sinister fraud came to the attention of the authorities. Child related crimes, such as child pornography, became known widely. With the escalation of the criminal element of the cyber crime, new laws were needed and specialist criminal defense lawyers were required.

However, even only as recently as the last five years cyber crime was still controllable. Cyber crime was not a major revenue earner for criminal gangs in the late 20th Century. It has only been since the millennium that things have changed.

Nonetheless, without globally implement criminal sanctions in place against the actions of cyber criminals, the ultimate criminal defense still exists, namely jurisdiction. Unlike a crime committed in the real world, it is physically possible for a criminal to be in two places at once when it comes to cyber crimes. You can commit a crime in the US while you sit comfortably in your apartment in Russia. Consequently, universal laws will be needed if a criminal defense mechanism is going to be put in place to combat these growing problems.

Fortunately for the cyber criminal another perfect criminal defense still remains, the apathy of government to unite to combat this growing problem.

Review more research articles by Emily GABLE at Criminal Lawyer Group with Free Criminal Background Check Service She is assistant secretary of Criminal Lawyer Group (CLG) an online organization consisting of submitted lawyers who are also volunteered writers about dealing with criminal defense, sex crimes, felony, juvenile, misdemeanor, theft, murder, burglary, drug crimes.

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The Obstacles Facing Cyber Law Enforcement
By Coenraad De Beer

The online community is cruel and ruthless leaving no margin of error for anyone. Once you make a bona fide mistake you get crucified immediately. It is because of this general attitude among many people in social communities, that people jump to unfair and unjustified conclusions. Most participants of these communities are used to this behaviour and are not bothered by it too much. Most of these unjustified remarks often cause embarrassment for the comment maker, which is well deserved, because you should take the consequences of your actions for speaking out loud without thinking. Where am I going with this? What does this have to do with fighting cyber crime?

Let me explain with an example: When a big company like Microsoft cause a security risk for users of Internet Explorer out of negligence, you can be sure that the press (including the online community) will throw some big stones at them. This response is justified because the safety of innocent users is put at risk because of the negligence of a respectful organisation. But when Microsoft makes a remark that is misunderstood by some people, without causing any security threats because of this ill formulated remark, why should they be crucified? Microsoft is run by people and people make mistakes. If the community wants to rant and rave about something, then find something that deserves some ranting and raving and stop wasting time on things that can be excused. The company has to waste valuable resources to put out the fires caused by this overreaction instead of using those resources to improve the security of their products. No, I am not a Microsoft prophet, I am simply using them as an example.

Investigating spam and determining the origin of a scam letter is not as simple as tracking an IP address. Most people think so, but that is because they never really tried to locate a spammer on their own after being spammed. It is very easy to forge an e-mail header and that makes it almost impossible to locate the real sender of the e-mail. Even if the header is not forged, you never know whether it is a case of identity theft. Computer criminals hack into e-mail accounts, they hijack web sites and use it to their advantage under the identity of an innocent victim. This enables them to operate undetectable by moving from one account to another. Jurisdictional constraints makes it is hard for federal organisations of one country to prosecute crimes committed in another crime, not even to speak of locating the criminal.

Abuse departments of hosting companies and service providers are so swamped with so many daily reports of spam and network abuse that it is impossible for them to respond to each and every spam report individually. It obviously creates the impression that they do not really take action against the guilty parties. Of course, some companies appear to have an abuse department, but it is only a front to make people believe that they take action against spammers. This discourages people from reporting cyber crime and it effectively allows cyber criminals to operate in the open without the risk of getting caught.

People take cyber crime lightly, cyber crime is being handled as crime committed in another dimension, a dimension not regulated by law. Cyber crime is just like any other crime committed in the normal world, the only difference comes in the methods of investigation. Cyber swindlers are real life criminals, they should never be underestimated. The fact that they operate behind a computer screen makes no difference. Law enforcement agencies do not really care about the person robbed from a couple of dollars, they only pursue the big fish. Unfortunately this is how most scammers operate. They steal a bit from one victim, they steal a bit from another victim, they steal a bit from hundreds of helpless victims and pocked thousands of dollars in the end. Law enforcement agencies will take this crime more serious if everyone starts to report it to their local police department. Sooner or later they will realise that something has to be done. Many police departments are also not equipped to handle digital evidence effectively and many police officers still do not have the skills to conduct proper cyber crime investigations.

Cyber crime is very volatile and cannot always be solved using conventional methods, so I appeal to the online community not to question the unconventional methods of cyber crime investigators. At least they are doing something about an epidemic that is ignored by many influential and powerful organisations.

About the Author
Coenraad is webmaster and founder of Cyber Top Cops, leaders in Internet security, prevention of online fraud and educating users against online scams and malicious software. You can report scams to them for investigation by using their Report Spam page.

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