Global Crime Busters Focus on the Internet

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.techtv.com/cybercrime/internetfraud/story/0,23008,3306346,00.html

By Reuters
January 17, 2001

White-collar crime busters gathered in Singapore and turned their
attention to the rising problem of Internet crime on Wednesday.

Some 500 delegates at the first global International Economic Crime
Conference heard how the Internet was a huckster's "holy grail,"
offering anonymity and instant worldwide access.

"Though technology has brought about opportunities for development, it
has also created new frontiers for criminal elements," said Tan Siong
Thye, director of Singapore's white-collar police unit, the Commercial
Affairs Department.

The three-day conference opened on Tuesday.

Pay-per-use cybercafes and software to block a computer's Internet
address have made criminals harder to trace.

Online banking and e-commerce transactions now proceed without
face-to-face contact, increasing chances of fraud, while email
addresses are easily hijacked.

These features have lent themselves to more Internet fraud and money
laundering. But one speaker at the conference was quick to point out
that the crimes themselves were not novel.

"What we're seeing is the same old frauds -- much quicker and much
more of them -- because what the computer was designed to do was to
create efficiency," said Allan Trosclair, executive director for the
US-based National Coalition for the Prevention of Economic Crime.

"It's creating efficiencies for the thief," Trosclair said.

Speakers said statistics on such crimes were difficult to obtain as
companies and individuals were often too embarrassed to report that
they had been duped.

One survey of 19,000 business leaders across 18 countries showed 52
percent had been victimized by fraud within the last 12 months.

Typically, 70 percent of fraud was by the company's own employees, it
said.

Highlighting the difficulties of tracking these crimes, Singapore
police were not immediately able to provide local figures.

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