Categories
End User security

Victims of internet piracy

Internet crime came closer to home today with the kidnapping of one of the Timico NetOps  team’s key players, the Pirate Duck. 

Criminal sophistication has reached new heights with this case.  The gang responsible for the crime has set up a web page, www.wheresmyduck.com,  so that distraught owner, engineer Ian P. Christian, can reassure himself that his duck is as yet unharmed and being looked after.

Efforts to track down the owner of the domain name have been fruitless as the “Who Is” function for that domain has cunningly been disabled.  No ransom demands have been received as yet but Ian is standing by his PC anxious to hear more news.

Ian is fairly phlegmatic about this incident. “He was after all a pirate duck and he who lives by the sword…”

The victim’s twin brother is pictured below.  Any information leading to the safe retrieval of the duck will be gratefully received. The incident is being dealt with privately and the Meteropolitan Police eCrime Unit has not yet been called in.  If you want to show your support for this cause you should join the Facebook group “Save The Pirate Duck

pirateduck

Categories
End User internet security

Online identity theft cost USA $48Bn in 2008

I was amazed to read in a press release by Anti Virus firm AVG that online identity theft lead to $48Bn worth of fraud in 2008 in the USA alone. This was part of a press release issued by the company today regarding its new Identity Protection product.

You can read the press release yourself but this is certainly topical for me having only last week attended the ISPA Parliamentary Advisory Forum on ecrime. The scale of the activity clearly makes it worthy of its own specialist blog rather than just getting the occasional post in mine.

I think I will follow up with a top ten security tips for safe use of the internet. Many of these tips will be obvious and just involve a little discipline on the part of individuals. More anon.