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Spam and Fishing
From the analysis
of Trend Micro, a company that specializes in computer
security, you can clearly see that the year 2004 was
a record year for the distribution of computerized viruses:
30 attacks, 28 of which medium risk and two high risk.
Three worms held the first position: Bagle, Mydoom and
Netsky, which, together with their variants, were the
cause of 25 of the registered attacks.
Email was the preferred channel of diffusion
of the several hackers, but others chose to channel
illegally to create more, serious damage. The indiscriminate
sending of email messages and/or newsletters, Spam,
without the consent of the receiver, is illegal. In
some countries (the most developed ones), the authorities
established that: to send email published without the
consent of the receiver is illegal. If this activity
is done systematically for profit, you also violate
a criminal norm and could be reported to the judicial
authorities.
There are several sanctions, and in
the worst case, imprisonment. The considerable damage
that these activities have done to companies and people
has been enormous moreover another tragedy called Phishing,
the name given to the system that captures information,
like passwords or other personal information, used by
many hackers pretend to be reliable people with a real
need for information send false emails containing eBay,
Pay Pal graphics and official logos and also offer Banking
and Credit Card services, asking you to fill in a form
enclose in the same email or on a web page with your
personal data, and often with your passwords or Credit
Card numbers. The form has nothing to do with the official
organism imitated in the mail so the password or Credit
Card number ends up in the data bank of the hacker who
had sent the false email. The experts define this illegal
practice as a form of "Social Engineering".
The latest news reported on this issue
is that in order to fight the main threats coming through
the web: Spam and Phishing, Europe and the United States
have promoted two very distinct initiatives that will
start at the same time. The intention is to defeat that
virtual monster that has caused damage worth millions
of Euro year after year, and according to the experts,
will involve a considerable number of people. "Safer
Internet Plus" is the project carried forward in
Europe. The main target of the project is to beat Spam.
The American project on the other hand is called "Digital
PhishNet" and is based on the collaboration of
several institutions, such as the FBI and private companies.
The target is to identify and to bring to justice those
people responsible for online fraud, thanks above all
to the technique of Phishing.
Glossary
Computerized virus, means small programs able to change
clone itself, self send in order to damage or make a
network or a single machine vulnerable.
Spamming means the indiscriminate sending
of email and/or newsletter messages, without the consent
of the receiver.
According to the definition in "Wikipedia"
the word Phishing is the capture of personal information,
like passwords, personal information, the hacker hiding
himself as a trustworthy person with a real need for
that information. It is a form of "Social Engineering".
Social Engineering is the most simple
and reliable means of obtaining information that you
could not learn otherwise for example username or even
your personal data (address, telephone number, etc).
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