WHAT IS IT?
The Internet is like a bad neighborhood in a big city. Sure, that’s where all the good clubs are, the porn is cheap, and you can get something to eat late at night. But that’s also where all the muggers, drug dealers, and con men hang out.
The ultimate aim of most online assaults is the acquisition of cash, but these are not simple robberies; they are complex scams perpetrated by large, organized groups, designed to inflict the maximum amount of chaos and ruin on their victims. Should you be unfortunate enough to fall victim to one of the many forms of online fraud, you stand to lose everything—your money, your home, even your identity. Your computer could be co-opted without your knowledge into an ersatz network of automated cyberwar soldiers. They target not just individuals, but entire corporations and even countries.
If movies are to be believed, your average hacker is a single, socially retarded genius working from his parents’ basement, amusing himself by inflicting his worst impulses on an unsuspecting public. He is able to type with such uncanny speed that the networks of entire governments give way beneath his mighty skills. In this, as in so many other things, movies lie.
Identity theft, fraud, and malicious hacks are big businesses, worth billions of dollars a year. The organizations that perpetrate these crimes are Russian mob fronts, Nigerian narcoterrorist gangs, and rogue elements of the Chinese government. These are serious, world-class villains, the kinds of guys who ride around in convoys of armored Mercedes SUVs guarded by burly ex-Spetsnaz beefcakes armed with MP5 submachineguns. They kidnap tourists, kill politicians, sponsor terrorism, run human trafficking rings, and operate child porn networks. Online fraud and identity theft are not the only businesses in which they involve themselves, but these are the ones that grease the financial wheels and keep the rest of the operation running.
The e-mails that initiate most online scams originate from cubicle farms not unlike the one in which you probably work. The management structure is similar to your company, with code monkeys and administrative grunts doing most of the initial work—tracking potential victims, harvesting e-mail addresses, and composing and sending the original e-mail. The only difference is that you have a 401(k) and health care, while the retirement plan from a Nigerian 419 scam organization is more likely a bullet to the brain.
Make no mistake. The people out there trying to rip you off are experienced, intelligent, and either desperate or highly motivated. They will attack you from multiple angles and will keep trying until they get you. If they can’t take your identity, they’ll take your money, and if they can’t get to that they’ll go after your computer and link it to their network of spam-distributing robot slaves. Your only defense is knowledge and a healthy bit of paranoia.