Archive

Nokia sent a letter to India's commerce ministry threatening to leave the country because of Indian taxes. The letter said that the "political risk" in India was increasing due to tax claims from the government. India's passage in March of a retroactive income tax violates a bilateral treaty between...

The Federal Trade Commission filed a suit against Wise Media this week, accusing the company of slipping unauthorized charges into consumer cellphone bills. Wise Media allegedly charged cellphone users fees for services to which they'd never subscribed, a practice referred to as "cramming." The comp...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested dozens of alleged cybercriminals in an international sting to crack down on Internet fraudsters. The arrests were the result of a two-year global sting operation conducted by the FBI and designed to nab hackers in "carding" crimes, in which perpe...

A Nevada judge has ordered that 228 online domains belonging to outfits that sell counterfeit Chanel items be seized, shuttered and removed from social networks and search engines. The case has raised questions regarding the control of Internet fraud in a widespread global marketplace and what const...

Seven members of a massive alleged Internet fraud ring have been charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The ring infected more than 4 million computers worldwide with malware and rerouted online searches fraudulently to websites and ads, which then paid the ring's member...

You've seen the ad a thousand times on the Internet: "1 Tip for a Tiny Belly" says the hand-lettered headline above the crudely drawn swelling-and-shrinking belly. "Cut down a bit of your belly everyday following this one weird tip," it goes on to say. If starvation caused by having funds continuous...

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have entered the mainstream -- and fraudsters are taking notice. In recent months, Fox News Network, CNN Anchor Rick Sanchez, and even President Obama have suffered high-profile hacks of their Twitter accounts. Public figures like Bill Gate...

Cybercrime is pervasive, pandemic and increasingly connected with other parts of the criminal ecosystem. It ranges from the theft of an individual's identity to the complete disruption of a country's Internet connectivity due to a massive attack against its networking and computing resources. This i...

A troubling up-tick in the frequency of Internet fraud attempts and the growing use of more sophisticated botnets and crimeware is leading a growing number of organizations to enlist the services of specialized Internet anti-fraud security services. Operating in a digital realm beyond the reach of l...

Microsoft users may feel as though they're the only ones constantly under attack from hackers, but they're not alone with that dubious distinction. Late last week, Red Hat, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based Linux provider, was also hit. The threat came in the form of a fake security warning. The e-m...

A new consortium called the Trusted Electronic Communications Forum (TECF) has brought together top companies in the financial and technology industries to tackle phishing and spoofing attacks aimed at stealing personal information. Phishing and spoofing are a kind of bait-and-switch often used for ...

The amount of Internet fraud perpetrated using a practice known as "phishing" increased 52 percent from December to January, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). In January, there were 176 new, unique attack types reported to the group, compared with 116 in December, the organization...

In mid-September, U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Mozelle Thompson kicked off the Strategic Global Summit for E-Commerce with a keynote address that touched on several pertinent e-commerce topics, the role the FTC has assumed as the Internet has developed into a business channel, and issues that leg...

ECT News Network's daily roundup of network security news from around the world.

Fraud on the Web may be analogous to fraud in the real world, but it seems to be far easier to defraud individuals of their bank accounts, cell phone accounts and even entire identities online. In this new medium, the black hats are outpacing the white hats, at least so far. Analysts are hoping the ...