iJack

iJacking is a mass market problem NOW - already affecting MILLIONS in the USA alone(source FBI).

Identity theft and associated credit fraud is already the number 2 reported crime in the USA - the FBI estimates the annual cost at $53 BILLION.

Law enforcement is unable to stem this tide.

Of 10 MILLION new victims in USA annually, the FTC estimates that 60% of cases are not even reported.

Less than 1 in 700 reported cases are caught and prosecuted. So the fraudster has a 99,94% chance of getting away with their crime - it's just too easy!

Some experts believe that Id Theft/Fraud has even overtaken narcotics as the top organized crime moneyspinner.

So disabuse yourself of the notion that this cannot happen to you. It can and increasingly it will. You need to take certain steps to defend yourself - they are not complicated or onerous, but do require some appreciation of the problem.

Visit defendID.info website for details of how ID theft/fraud is perpetrated and how best to protect yourself.

There you will find a simple I-jacking 7-point Protection Plan which will reduce or remove risk and provide peace of mind.

ID theft is NOT a small scale, hi-tech problem affecting just careless internet users. It is already large scale using conventional criminal methods - such as theft or copying of records from offices, unlocked mailboxes and trash.

Walk-in theft of portable PCs and disk drives is now a major source of data loss. Disaffected or bribed employees are also simply copying data from computers at work - when no hardware is missing, espionage is hard to detect.

Because credit fraud is so lucrative and relatively low risk, we can expect increasingly ingenious and professionally executed attacks on computer data both in the workplace and online.

The internet offers new opportunitities for large scale harvesting of identity information with very low risk of apprehension (e.g. "phishing" and "pharming").

We must expect increasing criminal investment in the technology and skills to exploit the vulnerability.

Experiments have demonstrated a frighteningly high percentage of experienced computer users are taken in by plausbible "phishing" exploits. Education has not been very effective against plausible attacks using "borrowed" artwork - often very difficult to detect.

Increasingly our participation is no longer even required as criminals refine methods to spy on our computers without our knowledge.

Traditional anti-virus software does not defend against spies, loggers, trojans and worms which do no harm to our computer (except hijack our confidential information).

The first application of spying was relatively benign as advertisers monitor our browsing habits to target relevant advertising. This was followed by spammers harvesting our email address files.

The next wave will be raids on our identity, banking and credit card information for the purpose of identity and credit fraud.

There are limits to the ability of software to defend us because of architectural limitations in both Microsoft Windows and the internet data transmission methodology. Neither was designed with security in mind which poses severe (intractable?) problems in defending them from espionage. As we progress toward universal broadband connectivity we will experience attacks our firewalls do not stop.

Because of the trans-national nature of the internet - the programming and operations of data theft exploits will likely be undertaken in a different country from the target.

Effective cross-border law enforcement is difficult to impractical for any number of jurisdictional, logistical, political and cultural reasons - outside a handful of PR showcases.

The greatest risk arises from economies with computer programmers unable to find attractive legal employment opportunities. Crime is a natural option for the desperate.

Despite their large computer literate populations, India and the UK produce almost no cyber crime, thanks to their flourishing IT economies which provides plenty of employment opportunity.

China, Indonesia, Russia, certain east Eutopean countries and Nigeria produce much more cyber crime and financial fraud. Can you envisage much cooperation with the FBI from law enforcement and judiciary in these countries? Get real!

The statistics suggest that the best long term defence against cyber crime is work for idle keyboards!