Improved OnGuardOnLine Site Teaches Cyber Safety to the Average Person

One of the better places for the average person to learn about the sometimes murky waters of the Internet is free and sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission. Although OnGuardOnline.gov and AlertaEnLinea.gov, its Spanish-language counterpart have been around for awhile -- some new and exciting improvements have been made to the site with a just released Web 2.0 redesign.

The new and improved site allows users to grab and embed games and videos, search for topics on the site, take a “show of hands” poll, and have a more interactive experience while learning how to avoid becoming an Internet crime statistic.

Articles and games covering sixteen topics -- including social networking, phishing, email scams and laptop security; plenty of buttons and banners you can post on your blog or website; free publications consumers and organizations can order; and links to the OnGuard Online partners from the public and private sector.

I should add that a lot of good people from both the government and private sectors have given resources and their valuable time to assist the Federal Trade Commission with this site. Industry and government partners -- include the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, National Cyber Security Alliance, Anti-Phishing Working Group, i-SAFE, AARP, National Consumers League, Direct Marketing Association, WiredSafety.org, The SANS Institute, The National Association of Attorneys General, Better Business Bureau, NetFamilyNews, CompTIA, National Crime Prevention Council, Association of College Unions International, and the Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association.

In my opinion, this represents a valuable partnership in dealing with the ever growing problem of crime on the Internet. This also represents a very credible collaboration of resources and industry experts (my humble opinion).

There is also a lot of material that businesses and organizations can use to educate their people with. Frequently, I get approached on this subject and I will continue to recommend this site as a valuable resource. Of course, the benefits for the individual person wanting to protect themselves, or become more knowledgeable are there (free for the taking), also.

If you are one of those businesses or organizations wanting additional matertials, you can get free OnGuard Online publications. For 50 or more copies, visit ftc.gov/bulkorder. If you need less than 50 copies, call 1-877-FTC-HELP.

Virtual Kidnapping - A New Version of a Confidence Trick!

Not all the kidnappings in Mexico and the United States are real. The US Immigration and Customs division gets reports of virtual kidnappings, where the intent is to extort money, but the alleged victim is safe and sound.

The kidnappers appear to be able to find out who is traveling to Mexico and/or is coming into the US illegally. They then call a family member or loved one, claiming they have the tourist or illegal immigrant hostage and demand money for their safe return.

I happened to pick up this story on Fox News, which reported that Immigration and Customs in Phoenix gets a report about once a week of smugglers holding a hostage. Although 75 percent of them are real, about 25 percent are bogus, according to the story.

The reason the virtual scam works is probably that real cases of people being kidnapped are becoming commonplace south of the border. In April, CBS News reported that a hotline set up in Mexico City to deal with extortion cases had received 44,000 calls since December. The hotline statistics recorded were 22,851 extortion attempts avoided, 3,415 telephone numbers identified as being tied to extortionists, and 1,627 people who paid off the virtual kidnappers.

In another version of virtual kidnapping, an illegal immigrant already in the country is contacted and told that a family member is being held hostage in Mexico. It's not unknown for smugglers to hold onto a family member and extort money from illegal immigrants whom they have brought across the border. With all the real kidnapping going on, it makes sense that fake ones seem legitimate.

In April, the New York Times did another story on virtual kidnapping. In their article, they speculated that at least some of it was being done from Mexican prisons. Apparently, the guards look the other way as long as they get a cut of the action. The article also mentioned that besides virtual kidnapping, other telephone scams are rampant in Mexico, like the sweepstakes variety, a type of the infamous advance fee (419) scam.

Network World asked why this type of kidnapping is referred to as virtual. Paul McNamara wrote a interesting piece pointing out that the term "virtual" doesn't really fit in these cases. "The crime itself is horrific — beyond comprehension in its cruelty — so there's some hesitancy to complain about semantics. But this is a technology column and the underlying issue — society's tendency to blame modern-day bad deeds on technology instead of the bad-deed doers — is an important one," according to McNamara.

He makes a very good point: scams designed to part people from their hard-earned money didn't start with the computer age. Confidence tricks have been around for a long time and virtual kidnapping is merely that, a confidence trick. A good example is what is known as the Spanish Prisoner letter, where someone was tricked into thinking they were securing the release of a wealthy individual (who couldn't reveal their own identity) from prison in return for future compensation. This particular scam dates back to well over 100 years ago.

The Internet is full of too-good-to-be-true scams, which use greed to lure victims. Besides greed, fear is another lure scammers use. We see this on the Internet in threatening letters allegedly from government agencies, or even in what is known as the hit-man scam. In the hit-man scam, a person is intimidated into paying someone off to remove a contract that has supposedly been taken out on their life.

Scams using the telephone are becoming more and more common as well, dubbed "vishing." Here the telephone is used to perform confidence tricks of all sorts, and/or to steal personal and financial information later used in identity theft schemes.

This doesn't take away from the fact that a lot of people are victimized because of the not very secure situation we have on our border. It often seems that the criminals are more in control than the authorities, and besides confidence tricks, we see an overabundance of crimes that threaten public safety and, some say, our national security.

Until we take the control of the border away from criminals, we are going to continue seeing a lot of people victimized.