Financial Cyber Crime / Cybernetic Self

Financial Cyber Crime is an offence committed over the internet, having a major impact on international banking and the financial sectors. Financial Cyber crimes affect individuals, companies, organisations and astonishingly even countries. All of this creates a negative impact upon the entire economic and social systems, because of the considerable loss of money.

Organised Criminal networks are drawn to the crime, due to the huge profits that can be made. The most worrying aspect about all of this is that, there are a number of factors that make it difficult and sometimes even impossible to trace the criminal or the illegal assets. This can be because of differences between countries and their national jurisdictions, how their international conventions are implemented and their general level of expertise in the investigative process and propositional authorities to catch the cyber criminals.

This is a factor in the growth of this crime. Alongside the ease of creating methods to steal valuable data and financially harm victims, the fact there are ways to hide and get away with the crime internationally, criminals seem to be seizing this opportunity. This is why it is a scary place sometimes online and people need to be aware of the dangers out there. Amazingly, 90% of all emails sent in the world are fraudulent. Baring in mind 294 billion emails are sent each day, that is a lot of scam emails. I will create a poster for my project to identify some crimes that are out there online and I will illustrate what you need to look out for and how to avoid the cyber crimes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35201188

https://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Financial-crime/Financial-crime

Social Engineering / Cyber Crime Research

Social engineering is a form of psychological manipulation that is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Criminals have developed a unique sense and strategy to fool people, through social learning. Technology is continuously expanding and more and more social connections are creating new platforms for cyber crime to take place. Cyber criminals learn from what the see online and discover methods to manipulate victims through confidence tricks to influence their behaviour.

International police agency Interpol, expresses social engineering as one of the worlds most emerging fraud trends. It is explained why, because of its ease of creation and distribution. You don't need to be a skilled hacker, just someone willing to communicate with people and write emails. Plus, the growth of the internet has played right into the hands of the criminals and it is now very easy to gather information about a target. A key part of social engineering is having information on your victim and criminals can easily get this from buying hacked company data and studying their victim's social profile.

Socialengineering.org have compiled research fro a survey to figure out statistics leading towards cyber crime. They found out,

• 90% of the people we ask will provide not just the spelling of their names but their email addresses without confirming our identity
• 67% of the people we ask will give out social security numbers, birth dates or employee numbers
• We have a 100% success ratio in physical breaches

The data collected is truly shocking, but it is a human error we all can make when not 100% focused. Also, they have compiled more research data into an info-graph that clearly depicts the methods and strategies cyber-criminals use to manipulate their victims, who are the main targets and financial statistics. As well as, security and defensive precautions to help you avoid becoming a victim.

90% of emails are scams, this is astonishing. I have discovered that most common cyber crime attacks mimic banking institutions. This is because, people trust banks and believe they are sincere, professional and dependable. Making it a great platform for criminals to illude victims. They often create a false situation and say, 'you account has been compromised' and informing you to transfer your money into some other accounts they have set up in the victims name for safe keeping. They would reinforce the situation with measurements with emails, letters, phone calls and act very professional in general to create a believable atmosphere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35201188

http://www.social-engineer.org/social-engineering/social-engineering-infographic/

Cybercriminal Money Scams 2016 / Cybernetic Self Research

Cyber criminals have affected online businesses and individuals since the internet first came to be. The rise in technology have led internet services and websites to make it easier and easier to pay bills, shop, make online reservations other means of payments. You can do any of these actions from anywhere in the world, removing any physical boundaries and making our lives easier. However, It also makes life easier for crime. Cyber criminals have endless vulnerable targets in the world who they can scam for money and endless platforms to perform the crime. Below are the most common up to date techniques cyber criminals scam people with.

http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/441818/file-3147721398-jpg/blog-files/paypal-phishing-scam300x300.jpg

Phishing Email Scams

Phishing scams are communicated through emails and social networks. Cyber criminals will send messages to try and trick you into giving away any login details or personal information that they can use for their benefit and leave you in the dumps behind. They get their victims to believe that the message sent is from an official source, usually pretending to be bank authorities or other financial institutes. Their messages contain links that take you to web pages that resemble that of a real company, but is actually controlled by the criminals, asking for personal information on a fake login access page.

They are most successful when people arent paying much attention, so they play on this to lure them into a trap. Phishing criminals create a sense of urgency to frighten the target, telling them a story of how their bank account is under threat and that they need to fix this as soon as possible. Often asking for personal information to quickly access and confirm your identity of the account. At this point they now have all the information they need to access the account or sell the account to the dark web or other interested parties.

Money Laundering Scams

This scam is one of the oldest and most popular scamming schemes, most people will have encountered one of these scams in their mail box in their internet life. It starts by opening an anonymous emotional message who claim to be an official government member, a business man or a wealthy family member asking for help to retrieve a large sum of cash from a bank. In exchange for help the offer a you a large sum of money. The scam starts off with the victim paying for small fees and legal costs and then leading you on to pay more for additional services, transaction and transfer costs. They keep sending confirmation letters to make you believe it is legit, but eventually, you end up with no money and no promised money.

https://ilookbothways.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/ecard1.png?w=450

Greeting Scams

Another old scam, this is usually a greeting card message that seems to be from a friend. But, when opened you usually end up with malicious software that is being downloaded and installed on your computer. Causing adds to pop up all over your screen as you use it. In some cases however, your device can be infected with really dangerous malware. In this case your computer will start sending private data and financial information to a fraudulent server controlled by IT criminals.

http://www.scam-detector.com/assets/how%20to%20get%20prequalified%20for%20a%20mortgage.png

Guaranteed bank loan or credit card scam

This scam sends messages to people that guarantee you large amounts of money that have already been pre-approved by the bank. People who are experiencing difficult times at the moment they receive the message they may be vulnerable to fall for this 'too good to be true offer'. However, this in general is an easy scam to spot. Using your common sense you will be able to to tell that it is fake, a huge bank loan or credit card would not be approved without knowing your financial situation.

http://www.ripandscam.com/images/lottery-ghana.jpg

Lottery scam

The lottery scam is a message that you open informing you have won a huge sum of money. But, before you can gain access to that money you have to pay some initial small fees. A lot of people fall for this as it highlights everyone wildest dream of quitting their jobs and living off of their winnings for the rest of their lives. this fantasy sometimes clouds peoples judgement and jump straight into the transactions to receive their so called money.

http://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/resize/frm/storypad-IUkL49scI4FGKgY5dEIBe5BSplA%3D/f1a9f422-80fe-44ca-877d-85ccd36b116d.jpg/w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

Hit-man Scam

Cyber criminals send you threatening messages to scare you into paying money. Most of the messages say they will kidnap a family member or that they have been payed to kill you unless a ransom is paid to them. They reinforce this threat with a message filled with details about the victims life, using personal information they find on social media. This is why it is wiser and safer to not display lots of personal information on social media.

https://www.webroot.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/online-dating-scam-300x225.jpg

Romance Scams

This scam plays on the nature of a persons subjective self, when their lust causes them to drop down their guard and think illogically. The scam takes place on social networking sites, where victims are informed about the notion of romance. The male scammers and usually based in west Africa and the female scammers are usually from eastern Europe. Cyber criminals have used this method for years and have improved their method based on their victims reactions. Some strategies take months to gain the trust of the victim and in some cases a meeting is arranged. The way they gain money from these scams are either, an unpredictable event occurs and the scammer needs money to buy a passport or other item of desperation, or they are kidnapped and held for ransom at the arranged meeting.

https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fake-antivirus.jpg

Fake Anti-Virus Software

This scam consists of a pop up saying 'your device is infected, install this antivirus software no to protect'. Scammers design the pop up to appear how you would expect windows or a security service provider to illustrate the problem, making you think that it maybe true. In some cases you can end up with a Trojan, Keylogger or CryptoLocker virus. These can lead to scammers to block and encrypt your operating system and request a sum of money for you to gain access to the computer again.

http://www.riskandinsurance.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CyberFraudImage_700x525-700x525.jpg

Impersonation Scam

Cyber criminals can hack onto your social media accounts and pretend to be you for their own value. They can create a false situation and ask for help through cash transactions from all of your contacts, to hopefully gain money from the concerned individuals who are offering their help. To avoid the situation of a profile hack, you should treat your social media account information as you would with your bank and do not display lots of personal information online that criminals could encode to discover your password.

http://waystoavoidscamsonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/make-money-online-scams-768x300.png

Make Money Fast Scams

One of the most common scams is the scam that promises the fortune of making money fast on the internet. They promise you made up jobs, plans and methods of getting rich fast and promised money from government sources. With the implication to work at home victims feel safer and lured into giving away personal information and financial data with the promise from a make believe source over the internet.

http://www.smartconsumer.ct.gov/smartconsumer/lib/smartconsumer/images/travel_scams_plane_ad.jpg

Travel Scams

The victim receives an email with an irresistible offer to travel to an exotic location for a special holiday, but it expires in a short amount of time. The criminals hide necessary costs until you pay the initial offer and they simply take your money without sending you anywhere. To avoid this, go with the well known and trust worthy travel agencies to be safe.

https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/top-online-scams/

Recent Money Flipper Scam / Instagram and Facebook / Cybernetic Self Research

A recent social media scam was called the money flipping scam. This was set up by a criminal group who expressed that they could flip your money to make more money, like a magic trick. This of course went viral, as bizarre stuff do on social media, causing some people to fall for it, especially inexperienced users. The anonymous profile reassures people that the money making tricks are real and work, with prearranged photographs and videos of the trick performed with satisfied customers. However these are all set up to create the idea of false perception.

http://www.dalerodgers.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/instagram.png

Because, this went viral and looked like a real thing people were thinking maybe this could work and people was falling for it. This is how a lot of scams publicise themselves through social media. Criminals took money off of people by asking them to go out and buy a green dot money pack, which is a prepaid card, to top up with the amount you want to flip. If you want to flip £100 you would flip to and receive £1000. After topping up the card they will ask for the card details, so they can access it and add a 0 to the £100 to create £1000. But, they will tell you in order for them to add the 0 they will have to cut the profits, to basically make the false business sound real.

In the end, they simply take the card details and steal the money. No money has been flipped and what ever money deposited on the card would be seen ever again. This is one small scam of many from social media. I highlighted this one because it is fairly recent and I can relate this to my current project, 'raising awareness of criminality through anonymous profiles online', to gather research and build a final design to highlight the crimes cyber criminals commit online.

Cyber Crime Research / Cybernetic Self

With the rapid rise of technology, the number of crimes has dramatically increased. Criminals are finding new ways to utilise social media to commit new and disturbing crimes that are difficult to police and protect you from. For my project I will create a design to illustrate these dangers and create an awareness of the crimes and avoid being a victim. Below, I will go through the most common social media crimes.

Scams
Scamming has been a crime for centuries, but the rise in technology and social media over the last decade has created a whole new market for criminals to scam. They create links to appear innocent at the side of web pages, share scams through social media and appear as pop up pages. Each promising what most people desire and often catch the ones looking for fortune and wealth. The scams appear all clean and safe, asking for credit card details and social security number to grant their false promise. Many people thinks scams are easy to spot, but even the most savvy internet user has to be switched on to avoid falling for the traps. To avoid this, research, call, ask questions of social media or friends to stay safe and raise awareness.

Cyber-bullying
Cyber-bullying is a new crime that has occurred over the last decade. This crime involves hacking or password and identity theft and this can be punishable under state and federal law. Teenagers are the most common victims and cyber-bullying through social media has often caused teenagers to self harm and suicide. serious cases like this can result in serious criminal charges. If adults engage in cyber-bullying it is called cyber-harassment or cyber-stalking and can also result is serious charges depending on the severity of the situation.

Stalking
Cyber-stalking is a common offence on social media sites and can result in serious charges in some cases. It entails harassing a person with messages, written threats and other forms of persistent threatening behaviour that endangers the recipients safety. Although Cyber-stalking is joked about if people are looking at other peoples social media accounts, it is a legitimate cause of concern in some cases. People who cyber stalk often strive towards actually venturing outside to stalk the victim and endangering them in not treated seriously.

Robbery
Social media these days people share all sorts of personal information, unaware of real world threats who might actually use this information to locate and steal. It doesn't take much to find out where someone lives, goes to school, works, shops, hangs out and more if you make that information readily available on social media. especially, if you use Facebook’s check-in or Google Maps feature, you could be in a bit of trouble if a certain robber is paying attention. So, best way to avoid this is to basically give out less personal information on your social media sites and posts.

Identity theft
Similar to the dangers of robbery, the ease of gathering personal information from users social media accounts provides an opportunity for criminals to steal user identities. The criminals hack into users accounts and emails and retrieve information to access personal and bank details, taking everything and leaving you in the dumps. Again, protect yourself by not including personal information that criminals can interpret to hack the account.

Defamation
This is when an individual communicates a false statement to a third party that paints another individual or entity in a negative light. Social media makes Defamatory statements scarily easy. The exposure to social media makes posts and statements well documented and many people see and hear what to have complaint, laughed, misunderstood and more. These posts can be twisted and businesses or individuals will be harmed by the defamatory statement and peruse legal obligations. To stay protected from this, be careful what you say on social media. Word spreads fast.

Harassment
Harassment happens all the time on social media. From annoying people to assault and sexual threats. With the rise of social media harassment has increased dramatically, with sexual predators and sex-offenders targeting young unaware people to indulge in their disturbing activities. These criminals often discuise them selves as teenagers and students, sending inappropriate and harassing messages to lure their victims and endangering their safety.