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New Times, New Crimes
Sharmila Ganapathy
BlueHyppo
Fraudulent e-mails. Hijacked accounts. Identity takeovers. These are but a few forms of online identity theft, a dangerous offshoot of the information age that has people, organizations and industries the world over up in arms on how to deal with it.
There was a time when all one had to worry about was someone getting hold of your identity card or credit card/bank cards to ¡°steal¡± your identity, or people with malicious intent digging through your trash for documents they could use. Think ¡°Catch Me If You Can¡±, the 2002 film about teenage conman Frank Abagnale Jr who made a lucrative living out of forging cheques in the 1960s.
Today, the methods of stealing identities have diversified, as ¡®modern¡¯ con artists have access to a stealthier, more anonymous medium than real life: the Internet. Instead of digging through trashcans, hackers are browsing your computer¡¯s Recycle Bin or using trojans and viruses to ¡®break into¡¯ your computer. The methods have changed, but the motivation hasn¡¯t: it¡¯s still all about the money.
Which is why financial institutions and their customers have been favourite targets of hackers, spammers, phishers and other online scammers. They go where the money is and with financial institutions traditionally being less protected technologically than other industries such as telcos or IT firms, there¡¯ve been numerous cases over the past few years where major banks found their websites hacked into and even worse, had their identities ¡®stolen¡¯ as scammers masqueraded as these institutions to glean online account information and other personal data from customers via fraudulent e-mails, a technique known as phishing.
While the majority of online identity theft does occur in the West, Asia is no exception as Asian society becomes more technology-savvy. Phishing scams involving local financial institutions have occurred in the past, resulting in banks buffing up their IT systems and educating customers to ward off future attacks. For instance, online banking customers of Maybank2u.com can view a special page on the website that educates them on identity theft and how they can protect themselves.
But don¡¯t rest on your laurels if you don¡¯t practice online banking, there are other ways online scammers can reach you. Take for instance free gaming/online gaming sites and using peer-to-peer applications to download your favourite songs and video clips. Many of these sites have hidden worms or trojans that track your Internet activity and some even ¡®worm¡¯ their way into your computer to mine passwords and other personal data. The community ¡®sharing¡¯ advocated by peer-to-peer sites meanwhile can lay you vulnerable to hidden viruses, worms and trojans.
Some Asian governments have stepped in to protect their citizens. South Korea¡¯s Information Ministry recently announced it would monitor IP addresses suspected of thieving private data from online portals and gaming sites. It is also taking measures to develop and distribute security patches to portal and game sites in a move to protect users from hackers. This followed an incident where personal data of more than 230,000 South Koreans were stolen and used to create fake IDs at a gaming site.
Here in Malaysia, online identity theft incidents are still relatively sporadic, but that doesn¡¯t mean you, as a consumer, should be complacent. There are several measures you can take to protect yourself.
UK-based telco BT recently published a guide for Internet users to ward off online identity theft. The guide appears in an Internet security report published in February this year (http://www.btplc.com/onlineidtheft/onlineidtheft.pdf). Among the precautions recommended in this universally applicable guide is to always be on the alert, such as questioning why a web site needs information about you, safeguarding passwords and online security details, refraining from clicking on links (the BT guide recommends typing in the full address of the website instead), keeping internet security software such as anti-virus, spyware and firewalls up to date and knowing where to go to report online identity theft. More details on the BT report are available at:
(Note: In Malaysia online identity theft is recognised as a crime, so you can go to the police if you suspect you¡¯re a victim of identity theft. Ensure you don¡¯t delete any relevant e-mails and data as these can be used as evidence to help your case. The National ICT Security and Emergency Response Centre also receives reports from the public at http://www.niser.org.my).
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