Agape Blog

Not astonishingly, we found that most of the services we tested minimally did not provide us with the information that they claimed they would.

The majority of the services gave us little more than the name itself. often with an address that was obsolete or inaccurate. With claims of being able to provide us with full employment history, criminal records, credit history, and much more, we were sad to see that in most cases after all was said and done, we could have found the alike information in the local phone book!

Although most of the services we reviewed fell short of our expectations, we recommend you to choose a service that truly stood out from the crowd which would provide you nearly all the information you are looking for… including extensive contact info (email addresses, phone numbers, and both work and home addresses), criminal records, credit history, residential history, and extensive employment history. And basic information for:

When should you report the Cyber Crime?
• Spyware
• Phishing
• Spam
• Identity Theft
• Online Shopping Fraud

Spyware: Spyware can steal your credit card numbers and passwords. Switch your home page, or re-direct your web searches to unwanted sites. Display annoying ads, slow your PC to a crawl, or even control it remotely. If you think your computer has spyware, report cyber crime.

Phishing: Phishing is an e-mail fraud method in which the perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking email in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients. Typically, the messages appear to come from well known and trustworthy Web sites. Store e-mail spam that phish for information about your company, bank, or organization. Lodge your cyber crime & forward the respective email information.

Spam: Spam is unwanted, invasive Internet advertising, typically for get-rich-quick schemes, or probable scams. Spam consumes your resources. Networks of virus-infected computers, Botnets (number of Internet computers that, although their owners are unaware of it, have been set up to forward transmissions including spam or viruses to other computers on the Internet) are used to send about 80% of spam. E-mail addresses are collected from chartrooms, websites, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users’ address books, and are sold to other spammers. Much of spam is sent to invalid e-mail addresses. Report your complain & forward the respective message.

Identity Theft: It is a term used to refer to fraud that involves someone pretending to be someone else in order to steal money or get other benefits. The term is relatively new and is actually a misnomer, since it is not inherently possible to steal an identity, only to use it. The person whose identity is used can suffer various consequences when he or she is held responsible for the perpetrator’s actions. If your information has been misused, file a report about your identity theft.

Online Shopping Fraud: If you have problems during a transaction, try to work them out directly with the seller, buyer or the website operator. If that does fails, file your complaint.

Jayesh Bellani
Executive: Fraud Management System
Agape Inc

Trojans:

A Trojan is a destructive program that poses as a harmless application. Some Trojans will claim to get rid of viruses or other harmful applications, but instead introduce viruses and leave it vulnerable to attacks by hackers and intruders.

You can minimize your chances of unintentionally downloading Trojans by:

• Not opening emails or accepting attachments from unknown sources.
• Installing software from trusted sources only.
• Not clicking on links contained within emails of unknown sources.
• Regularly scanning your computer for Trojans and other malicious programs with up-to-date anti-virus software.
• Using a firewall to monitor traffic to and from your computer while connected to the Internet.
• Downloading and installing security patches for your operating system as soon as it is available.

Viruses & Worms

Computer virus is software that affixes itself to another program like a spreadsheet or word document. Active virus attempts to reproduce and attach itself to other programs.

A worm is similar to a virus. It exploits computers in a network that contain security holes. Once a security hole is found, the worm will attempt to replicate itself from computer to computer. Like viruses, worms can be equally destructive.

You can increase your chances of ensuring your computer is free from worms and viruses by:

• Installing anti-virus software, and keeping it updated with the latest virus definitions.
• Downloading and installing security patches for your operating system as soon as they become available.
• Not accepting attachments from emails of unknown sources.
• Installing software from trusted sources only.

Spyware & Adware

Spyware is a type of software that covertly collects user information while on the Internet.
Adware is a type of spyware used by marketers to track Internet user’s habits and interests for the purpose of customizing future advertising material. Adware can monitor information such as the types of sites visited, articles read or the types of pop-ups and banners the user clicks on.

You can minimize your chances of unintentionally downloading spyware onto your computer by:

• Being wary of banners, ads and pop-ups while surfing the Internet. Do not click on them no matter how enticing they may appear.
• Reviewing terms and conditions when you install free programs or subscribe to services from the Internet.
• Using up-to-date anti-spyware program to regularly scan your computer.

Phishing

You can minimize your chances of being a victim of Phishing scams by:

• Treating all emails requesting personal log on information such as username, password or PIN with extreme caution.
• Immediately deleting emails of unknown origins, no matter how innocent or provocative the subject headings sound.
• Changing your Internet Banking password on a regular basis.
• Keeping your anti-virus and firewalls up-to-date and perform regular scans of your computer.

The easiest way for identity thieves to steal your identity online is by getting hold of your passwords. In order to safeguard your identity, password protection must be a part of your online security measures. Passwords vary in their degree of security protection, frequency of change, and typically vary in required characteristics from system to system.

When you use the Internet you will be in danger of losing money if a sensitive password such as the one you use for payment processing transactions becomes known to a thief. Needless to say what he will do with that password. But what need to be stressed is that the thief will also try to match the same password for different accounts you might have. For example, the thief might check to see if you have a PayPal account where the same password is used.

Almost crack-proof passwords are challenging to guess and a no-brainer to remember. In other words, a solid password includes a combination of number and letters and should not be too easy to spell or capture. For obvious reasons, the worst password is the one that is non-recallable. To avoid all these hassles, people mostly use simple passwords and create blunders. This is so beause they try to include the following things in their passwords, which can be easily guessed, if the thief is your acquaintance.

• Initials
• Birth dates
• Sequential words or number combinations (e.g., “qwerty,” “asdfg,” “12345″)
• Location (city, country)
• Middle name, Mother’s maiden name, etc.
• Favorite pet name, celebrity or other personal interests
• Dual names or words (like smithsmith, googlegoogle)
• Derogatory phrases - obscenities (like “yousuck”, “hell”)
• Passwords based on the company or web site provider

So always use strong passwords which cannot be easily cracked and make sure you are not your own worst enemy.

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the user. The term “virus” is also used to refer to many different types of malware and adware programs.

Once your machine gets infected by a virus, it takes control and slowly tears you apart in the following ways:

1. It attempts to harm your system; either by slowing down the performance or completely corrupting it.
2. It tries to spread to multiple computers, if you are connected in a network.
3. Phishing: Some viruses control your system and try to steal important information from your system.
4. Sometimes, a virus can also defame you by stealing your sensitive information and displaying it to public. Such a virus is usually designed by hackers.

There are various ways in which you can secure your system from the onslaught of viruses which will be discussed later; till then the super tip is to use a strong antivirus program and keep it updated.

In the past week i had presented the top 10 security threats for the year 2008. Below i am mentioning a detailed report on those threats and the issues related to them. This report has been made by our Fraud Management expert: Mr. Prabhat Tiwari.

There have been lot of cases recently, where either an individual or an organization had to suffer huge losses due to some security lapses. Internet security has become extremely important, which requires identification of the possible threats and combating them. We have presented the top 10 security threats below in our endeavor to create awareness about the threats, so that everyone can avoid them to prevent occurrence of loss.

We had launched this toll free number on 17 December 2007 to combat cyber crime and mobile offenses.

With the increase in the number of PDA’s and mobiles, related crimes in this sector have also increased. Cyber crimes such as online fraud, phishing or even threat mails have witnessed an increase in recent time. Also mobile related offenses like unsolicited calls or pornographic MMS have made many suffer. According to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT IN) hackers had attacked around 6000 websites in the last year.

But now such sufferers can call 1800 209 6789 and seek professional and individual assistance for FREE. This number currently works only in India. But we are planning to make this number accessible worldwide.

This is our endeavor in curbing cyber crimes and making the web a safer place for everyone.