“ There is a sucker born every nanosecond.” –A play on a qoute mistakenly ascribed to circus impresario, P.T. Barnum
YEARS ago, I came across an email message from a legitimate contact telling a sad story and asking for emergency money in a far-off land. I searched some phrases and sure enough, it was a scam. Out it went with the spam trash.
My take on this: my contact’s email was breached and his contact list hacked. This is one of the reasons I am loath to forward emails sent by well-meaning friends, no matter how funny.
What is amazing is that people have been victimized by this scam all over the world when a few keystrokes would have verified it and a bit of common sense and a smidgen of cynicism would have raised one’s hackles and suspicions.
There are rough estimates of $183 million per year on average that have been scammed from the unsuspecting on the internet. The figure could be more since a big percentage of people will not admit to being conned.
The electronic age has brought us wonders and unbelievable convenience defying space/time constraints and accomplishing things we can only do in previous times if we were physically present in one place. With an internet connection, we can do great and wonderful things that were the stuff of science fiction not so long ago.
But there is a sinister side to the internet — a very sinister side. And it gets darker as moral turpitude and relativism appear to be on the rise and our capacity to be shocked is diminished with every jaw-dropping crime.
There was a time when crime was met with swift and appropriate punishment. Sadly, we have archaic laws governing these types of crimes and enforcement is nearly non-existent. We are in uncharted territory.
For as long as these laws which were structured in the past cannot keep up with the overwhelming volume of cyber crimes, it is in our best interest to learn how to become savvy net users and defend ourselves from the onslaught that comes electronically.
The amount of available crud (translate that to disgusting things like porn, pedophilia, scams and gambling and some such variation of evil) on the net is staggering. In the book I wrote, there is a chapter dedicated on avoiding the pitfalls of scams and the schemes of con artists designed to separate you from your hard-earned money.
This time, the level of sophistication is up several notches higher as many unscrupulous and oftentimes, amoral and downright evil people everywhere around the world see the internet as the modern, deceptively innocuous version of highway robbery using a computer instead of a gun.
If we are internet users, we are all at risk, unless and until we take the necessary psychological and physical precautions to deal with this and become relatively “scam proof.” No one is sacrosanct. These scams are designed to prey upon two basic weaknesses ingrained in our DNA wiring as humans: GREED and FEAR.
Here’s one blanket caveat to keep us on our toes about how lottery scams and cons play out in cyberspace. REMEMBER — and I can’t emphasize this often enough, on this matter, and perhaps, other significant areas of life — IF IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS. Okay, repeat that as your mantra.
The scams that feed on greed are so sophisticated that they can send a seemingly authentic check by mail from a real bank with so many zeroes on it. If you bite at the first overture, they then ask for a processing fee from you for you to get the rest of the winnings. This is called the Nigerian scam apparently because the first perpetrators allegedly were well educated but destitute Nigerians who found that their facility for the English language could be exploited to scam millions using the internet.
The scam has spread and morphed with mind-boggling variations but with only one nefarious purpose — to separate you from your money. No one race or culture has the monopoly on these. These can originate anywhere in the world. I have had mine come in purportedly from G8 as well as impoverished countries.
If you have not consciously joined any lottery, why in heaven’s name would you think you have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning even one thin dime? Also, legitimate lotteries will NEVER, repeat NEVER, ask you for money in order for a winner to claim a prize.
Some scams feed on your fear. One of the most deceptive things is to receive an email from your bank instructing you to click on a link and verify your information since someone supposedly is accessing your account and if you don’t verify your information, particularly your pin number or password, this can result in a temporary hold on your funds.
The modern term for this is “phishing” which refers to the activity of defrauding an online account holder of financial information by posing as a legitimate company. I received one of these phishing calls which had a legitimate ID on the caller ID asking us to call a number and even left a reference number claiming to check on some gas card purchases. I told her I need to verify if her call is legitimate. I detected a hint of dejection in her response. Sure enough, a check on the phone number she left indicated it was a phishing call.
No legitimate financial entity will ask you for financial information online. Cut scammers off at the knees with the simple expediency of calling the fraud unit of your bank or credit card company yourself.
Take the bull by the horns. Generate the call. Get the telephone number from your statement or your card and DO NOT CALL THE NUMBER that the caller or e-mailer provided you with. It’s a TRAP.
If it is an email, hit the spam button and empty the trash. Don’t just delete it. Sure, they will morph into another form but be proactive and make it more difficult for them. These scams are like viruses or shape shifters and can mutate faster than the speed of light. PC users are more vulnerable to spammers/scammers and pesky pop-ups than Mac users. But this too can change. C’est la vie.
Is there karmic justice? Because con artists rarely ever see the faces of their victims or know the full extent of the damage that they wreak on real people with real lives, these crimes seem impersonal in nature and rarely, if ever, do con artists get their comeuppance. Translate that to jail time or some form of punishment, like being exposed to an anthill, boiled in oil or tickled to oblivion… Just kidding of course… Con artists should be happy we no longer live in Medieval Times.
Often, these scammers are based overseas outside of any jurisdiction. The wheels of justice grind ponderously, exceedingly slow and you sometimes wonder if crime stoppers and society in general, would ever catch up with this distinct phenomenon of the interesting times we live in.
If you think only the “little people” are at risk, think again. Governments and institutions have become easy targets for sophisticated, often juvenile hackers. Cyber crime has reached daunting proportions and has reached the institutional level. Supposedly uber secure websites such as that of the CIA, NSA, FBI, Scotland Yard, the US Congress and mega-corporations like Sony, Nintendo, Citibank and a host of others have recently been either hacked or brought to a halt from the comforts of a teen-ager’s bedroom in a foreign land.
A few years ago, a 19 year old, baby-faced, reclusive boy from England named Ryan Cleary, is alleged to have been responsible for bringing down the websites of the CIA and Scotland Yard. The teener stayed glued to his computer holed up all day in his room filled with posters of scantily clad women.
The upside to be gleaned from such high-level security breaches is that this exposes the weaknesses of such websites. It also shows how vulnerable we all are. The electronic security industry sees the potential of a business that can change the architecture of the internet by piping the flow of information.
For government operatives to use unsecured email to conduct top secret operations is like dangling fresh bait to a sea of sharks.
Clearly, these breaches, like Julian Assange’s wikileaks, are not for monetary gain but for the notoriety and the bragging rights of being a once lowly unknown gnat bringing down behemoths. The motive is deeply rooted
in probably what Andy Warhol once said in 1968, “In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.”
But those big holes are for the big boys to plug. As for the ordinary cyber citizens, simply proceed with caution when online. In cyber matters, a healthy dose of cynicism and a smidgen of common sense work as well as an ounce of prevention.
Be on guard. Better yet, UNPLUG for long stretches from Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Instagram, Reddit or any other social media or from following inane and insane celebrity tweets on Twitter.
Strive to live in the REAL WORLD.
The virtual world STILL cannot hold a candle to the real world. You can’t feel the sensation of a good sneeze virtually. Or that of a hug or a kiss… Or of the wonderful feeling of being in your bed sipping a warm mug of cocoa as you listen to the gentle pelting of the rain on the roof at night as you prepare to go to sleep…
There is a lot of real living for us to do. The internet has its place in our world. But you are the boss and you can decide to curtail its influence on the quality of your own life. We get to pass this way but once. Choose well.
Grill salmon steaks brushed with butter (Yup! Butter makes it better!) and sprinkled with lemon on a summer’s day. Create panini sandwiches for friends or loved ones on your grill pan. Dance. Fly a kite. Knit a shawl. Take time to sip your tea or tend to your garden in the spring. Laugh with the kids. Log off for long stretches of time and create something with your hands that will make your heart glad and make the people in your immediate orbit praise God for having you in their lives — even for just a short while.
The virtual world is a blessing simply meant to enhance life, NOT REPLACE IT. That’s all it does. Even with all its bells and whistles, it is a spice, not the main entree.
After all, life tethered on terra firma, is for real living, right here, right now.
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Nota Bene: Monette Adeva Maglaya is SVP of Asian Journal Publications, Inc. To send comments, e-mail [email protected]
