Oh brother...another 419 scam

The 419 scam is also known as the Nigerian Letter Fraud and the Advance Fee Fraud. This posting from the FBI discusses this and other common e-mail fraud schemes.

Here we go again...

Yesterday I received a letter via e-mail from a sad sack called Mrs. Susan Morgan. Basically, she's a wealthy widow who lives in Kuwait (with an e-mail address from Yahoo! China and a mailing address from the Ivory Coast{Côte d'Ivoire}), and she's a born-again Christian. Apparently she's dying, and she has no heirs except her late husband's relatives. She doesn't want to leave the money to the late husband's relatives because they're heathens (my words, not hers). Well, it's my lucky day! She wants to leave her money to me (she thinks I'm a church) because she knows that I'll use it for Christian causes.

Scam baiting is a way that people try to scam the scammer by pretending to be a victim in order to waste the scammer's time or to gather information about the scammer so legal action can be taken.

The site 419 Eater contains accounts of people who engaged in scam baiting. Dateline NBC on US network NBC has done investigative pieces on Advance Fee Frauds by performing scam baiting.

I would think that by now, people would realize that these e-mails are ludicrous and they would either disregard the e-mails or (if they're in a playful mood) engage in a little scam baiting. Unfortunately, there are still people who let their greed override their common sense, as demonstrated in this recent story about a woman who lost $400,000 to scammers.

Why am I discussing this on a technical education blog? As an IT professional, you may have to play the role as "police officer" to your company's IT resources. In that role, one of your job duties will be to warn your user base of viruses, security threats, hoaxes, and e-mail scams. It may seem like it's a waste of time to send warnings about e-mail scams to your user base because most people would realize it's a scam, but the warnings are for those who will throw common sense out the window for an imaginary chance at the big prize.

Although you are doing someone a favor by warning them about potentially losing their money, you are actually practicing due diligence for protecting your company's IT infrastructure. Someone who's corresponding with these scammers (whether the person is making serious inquiries or if the person is scam baiting) using your company resources can put your infrastructure at risk since SMTP requests are traceable.

Note: When you tell your users to ignore the "advance fee fraud" e-mails, also tell your users not to engage in scam baiting using the company's resources. You don't want your servers and network clogged with traffic not related to work.

A Historical Election Day in the US (2008)

Regardless of who wins the election, history is about to be made in the United States. We are either going to be getting our first man of color as President, or we are going to get our first female Vice-President (and our eldest elected President should that party win).


About two years ago, Professor Ed Felton from Princeton University and 2 graduate students found ways to hack the Diebold voting machines.

Election day in the United States is interesting for technology since USA has been using paperless voting machines for about 3 years now. Again, the focus of discussion on many radio and television news programs is the "hackability" the voting machines.

If you're interested in how the hack works, here is a video demonstrating the hacking:



For a little humor about hacking the voting machines, here's a funny satire video post on hacking voting machines.


I've written about this topic on the blog during the 2006 election, and the things that I've discussed then seem to be relevant today.

• Election Day in the US
  


• More on Election Day in the US

More on Verizon v. Vonage

Here are some updates on the Verizon v. Vonage saga:

• On April 24th, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Vonage can continue to sign up new customers while Vonage is appealing the patent infringement loss to Verizon.


• While the appeal is pending, Vonage plans to continue paying a 5.5 percent royalty rate on all future sales to an escrow account, and it has posted a $66 million (USD) bond

Even with these findings, Vonage's operations are still in trouble. Vonage has admitted in an Security and Exchange commission filing that they began to lose customers before the ruling, and all the legal trouble could lead to bankruptcy.

Woo-hoo, woo-hoo-hoo! Maybe not.....(Verizon v. Vonage)

For those of you who are not familiar with the case, Verizon sued Vonage for patent infringement regarding their VoIP technology and won the case. Does that mean that Vonage is a dead company? It's not dead yet, but it's on life support. A judge in an April 6th hearing found that Vonage can still provide services to their existing customers, but they cannot acquire new customers. Even with that finding, an appeals court can override that ruling. Even though as of now Vonage can support their existing customers, it's possible that Vonage may cease operations.

What if you or your small business is an existing Vonage customer? How can you prepare for a potential Vonage collapse? The good news is time is on your side. You have time to evaluate your VoIP needs and choose another provider.

This article from VoIP News is written for IT professionals on how to prepare for a potential Vonage collapse. This article highlights how to plan for choosing a new provider and what to consider when you decide to make the switch.

Could the Communications Decency Act Get Revised?

See the latest updates on the dontdatehimgirl.com case in the comments....

Introduction
The Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 protects minors (people under 18 years of age) from obscene electronic communication. Another part of the CDA deals with libel and slander on the Internet. According to the CDA, if libelous or slanderous speech is published on a web site, the web site operator is not liable for the information if it is posted by someone. For example, if someone goes on the forum on my web site and publishes slanderous statements about a figure, I am not liable for what that poster said (although the victim can pursue legal action against the poster). There is a defamation lawsuit currently happening that may change that.

To summarize the case, Todd Hollis is suing Tasha Joseph, the web operator of dontdatehimgirl.com, for defamation of character. According to the case, an anonymous poster posted false, slanderous comments about Mr. Hollis, and Ms. Joseph refused to remove the comments when she was asked by Mr. Hollis to do so. It was recommended to Mr. Hollis to post a rebuttal comment or to post his own web site countering the charges.


John Seigenthaler Sr. lost a legal battle with Wikipedia over a "prankster" posting on Wikipedia that he (Mr. Seigenthaler) was involved in the assasination of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. This is the case that actually added the section (section 230) to the CDA absolving web site operators of liability from users posting information on their sites


Although there is a precedence that was already set regarding libelous information published on a web site, the lawyers for Mr. Hollis are finding holes in the law protecting web site operators. If the case is found in Mr. Hollis's favor, this could change how web site operators maintain their sites.

My Take
As a web site operator, what do I think of this situation?

The intention of Section 230 of the CDA was supposed to help promote the freedom of legal speech on the Internet. I can understand the fear of changing Section 230 because America is becoming a more litigious society. If someone decided to post an opinion of a product, service, or person on a web site, the person being critiqued could "cry foul" and sue the web site operator and the poster for defamation. Although the lawsuit would probably be dismissed because the person was expressing an opinion and not stating comments as fact, it would still cost the web site operator money and time to fight the legal battle.

However, I have two concerns regarding Section 230:

• Even though I am not liable for what someone publishes on my site, whether it's on my forums or on this blog, I still try to practice due diligence by monitoring comments before I publish them, reviewing requests for user IDs for the forum, and monitoring the forum for inappropriate posts. There are other web site operators that perform the same due diligence to prevent situations like this. The problem is not all web site operators practice due diligence. Because they are not legally obligated to monitor third-party content on their site, they don't have to spend the time reviewing the published material. As a result, situations like Mr. Hollis's occur.


• My concern is the double standard regarding how published media is treated. According to Section 230, Ms. Joseph is not responsible for what someone posts about others because it was published on the Internet. If Ms. Joseph was a publisher of print media (a newspaper or a magazine), and if the same information about Mr. Hollis was published in the print media, she is liable for what was published, and she can be sued for libel.

Summary
If the case is found in Mr. Hollis's favor, this could cause a review of the Section 230. If Section 230 is revised, it will make web site operators more aware of what gets published on their web site. While, in general, I think that Section 230 does need to be revised, the only concern that I have is that it could trigger frivolous lawsuits because someone didn't like the opinion that someone else published.

The Legal Issues of a Cyberprank

Warning: This topic contains material and links to material that may offend some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

Just as the invention of the telephone spawned prank calls, the Internet spawned cyberpranks. Some of them are harmless, like the one going around a few years ago about the "built-in camera" in the computer. Others are illegal, like posing as someone else (usually a celebrity) for personal financial gain.

While some cyberpranks are obviously libelous (ex: if I open a MySpace account posing as some celebrity, and I post images of that celebrity without his/her consent, and I post information that isn't true about that celebrity, I can face civil action) or illegal (ex: the 419 Nigerian scam), there is a recently reported cyberprank that's causing ambiguity of what's illegal or libelous.

A web developer decided to play a prank. He wanted to know how many responses he could receive in 24-hours to a classified ad for sex. He posed as a "submissive woman looking for an agressive dom" and posted a sexually explicit photo on classified-ad site craigslist. Then, he publicly posted all of the unexpurgated responses, including all the personal information and the photos, on Encyclopedia Dramatica.

(For more information on the prank, here's the full story: Craigslist prank. Let me know if the link is broken by the time you read this.)

This prank opens up a number of legal issues:

• Is your privacy being violated if you voluntarily give personal information and the person uses it for his/her purposes?


• Are you open to civil or criminal litigation by misrepresenting yourself?


• Are you open to civil action for posting personal information about someone else which could cause damage to the person's livelihood?


• Is craigslist liable for the fallout from this prank?

Here is my take:

Is your privacy being violated if you voluntarily give personal information and the person uses it for his/her purposes?
A general answer regarding a "violation of privacy" - if you did not willingly reveal personal information to the person who received it (ex: someone ran a stealth program on a site to collect information), the answer is yes. However, if you willingly reveal your private information, the answer is no, your privacy is not being violated. If I want something to remain private, I don't reveal the information.

However, what if the person who is collecting the information is misrepresenting the reason why he's collecting the information? Usually, many sites who are collecting your information explicitly tell you (in their privacy policies) what they are going to do with your information, and they explicity warn you about revealing your public information on their public forums. I think that it still stands that if you willingly reveal the information, your privacy is not being violated.

Are you open to civil or criminal litigation by misrepresenting yourself?
This really is a tough question. In some cases, it's obvious. If I pretend to be a disaster victim to collect donations, I am going to face criminal charges if I get caught. In some cases, misrepresentation is legal. For example, the TV show
Dateline (on US TV network NBC) does a show with the cooperation with legal authorities where the investigative reporters pose as 12 and 13 year old children on the Internet to catch sexual predators.

However, what about this cyberprank case? From a criminal standpoint, there doesn't appear to be any laws being broken. From a civil standpoint, it's pretty ambiguous (see the next question).

Are you open to civil action for posting personal information about someone else which could cause damage to the person's life?
Another tough question that I have a very hard time answering. This prank can cause some serious damage to a person's life. It could wreck marriages, and it could wreck careers. Plus, since the personal information (e-mails, phone numbers, IM accounts) was also published, it opens that person up to harassment.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone sues the prankster because of damage caused by the prank, but could the complainant win? I don't know. On one side, the prankster misrepresented himself, and the mark thought that he was dealing with a potential partner. The prankster used the information for his own gain (his amusement). On the other side, the action could have been used as grounds for divorce, or the person was involved in an occupation where the person must observe "morals clauses" (ex: clergy).

What about physical harm that happens to the person because of this action? For example, the person may attempt suicide over the reprocussions of the prank, or some zealot decides to physically attack the person over his indecent behavior. Is the prankster open to civil action then?

Is craigslist liable for the fallout from this prank?
I took a look at craigslist's terms of use, and they do warn the user about answering the classified ads with caution. They also state that you may encounter ads that are "misleading" because "you acknowledge that craigslist does not pre-screen or approve Content".

Is craigslist liable for the fallout of this prank? NO! Is craigslist irresponsible for not monitoring the ads more closely? YES!

I think that the fallout from this prank may cause the webmasters of craigslist to reconsider their policy of not pre-screening the ads before they are published.

---

I would love to hear your responses and opinions of this issue, especially from those of you with a legal background.

Net neutrality - It's nothing like Switzerland

Note:If you have your own web site, or if you have a blog, you may want to pay attention to this article...

One of the hottest debates that's going on in the U.S. Senate is net neutrality. Net neutrality, in a nutshell, means that all Internet sites must be treated equally.

The issue is that major providers, such as the telephone and cable industries, want to be able to manage their networks as they see fit. One of the things that they want to do is charge more money for users that use more bandwidth, rather than the flat fee for Internet connectivity. The concern that opponents have is the providers will be able to do the following: block content that providers find to be offensive, downgrade the quality of services that competing Internet providers have to offer, and reduce the time it takes for a page to load from a company that doesn't pay the provider as much money.

The "Internet Freedom Preservation Act", a bill introduced in Congress by Senators Olympia Snow (R-ME) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), basically will make it illegal for Internet providers to "block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade" access to content or to prevent users from attaching devices of their choosing to the network. They would also be barred from making special deals with content providers to ensure speedier delivery or improved quality of service;all material would be offered on an equal basis.

Supporters of this bill want to continue to support the freedom of the Internet, while opponents claim that they are not compelled to promote speech they are against, and that the government should not impose rules on the free market.

Who is in support of this bill?

• IAC/InterActiveCorp


• Ebay


• Amazon


• Yahoo!


• Earthlink


• Google


• Microsoft


• Moveon.org


• Christian Coalition


• AARP


• Consumer Federation of America


• American Library Association


• Free Press


• Tech Net


• Celebrities such as Moby and Alyssa Milano

Who is against the bill?

• Bell


• Verizon


• National Black Chamber of Commerce


• Progress and Freedom Foundation


• Ludwig von Mises Institute

Where do you stand on this bill? Do you need more information before you can decide? This article talks about the net neutrality debate in more detail.

If you already have a position, be sure to contact your senators and let them know where you stand.