Spam - It also impacts the environment

McAfee has released The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report. The study looks at the global energy expended to create, store, view, and filter spam across 11 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The report correlates the electricity spent on spam with its carbon footprint, because fossil fuels are by far the largest source of electricity in the world today. Since emissions cannot be isolated to one country, the study averages its findings to arrive at the global impact. Key findings include:

• The average greenhouse gas (GHG) emission associated with a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2. That’s like driving three feet (one meter); but when multiplied by the yearly volume of spam, that amount is equivalent to driving around the earth 1.6 million times.
• Much of the energy consumption associated with spam (nearly 80 percent) comes from users deleting spam and searching for legitimate email (false-positives). Spam filtering accounts for just 16 percent of spam-related energy use.
• Spam filtering saves 135 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year. That is equivalent to taking 13 million cars off the road.
• If every inbox were protected by a state-of-the-art spam filter, organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by 75 percent or 25 TWh per year, the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road.
• Countries with greater Internet connectivity and more users, such as the United States and India, tend to have proportionately higher emissions per email user. The United States, for example, had emissions that were 38 times that of Spain.
• While Canada, China, Brazil, India, the United States and the United Kingdom showed similar energy use for spam by country, Australia, Germany, France, Mexico, and Spain came in about 10 percent lower. Spain had the lowest figure, with both the smallest amount of email that was received as spam and the smallest amount of energy use for spam per email user.

Not only is spam related to cybercrime and a nuisance, but it also impacts the environment. Download the study here. It’s worth a read.

Using IT to Combat Money Laundering

Money Laundering in simple words is about making money that comes from a ‘source a’ look like it has come from ‘source b’. This in world of software is also called repudiating one’s identity. Money Laundering has been practiced generally by criminals trying to disguise the origins of money obtained from illegal activities to craft them in a way that they seem to originate from legitimate sources. This is mainly to prevent them connect them to criminal activity. The most common offenders in this process are drug traffickers, corrupt politicians, terrorists and con artists.

Financial Institutions and Banking Institutions are amongst the most vulnerable to Money Laundering as illegal money enters the economy via banks in the form of large cash deposits or illicit financial transactions.

Money Laundering typically has 3 main phases – Placement, Layering and Integration. The common methods used in each of these phases are mentioned below:

1. Placement Stage: This prefers to the physical disposal of bulk cash proceeds derived from illegal activity.
a. Cash paid into bank (mostly with staff involvement or mixed with proceeds of legitimate business.
b. Cash used to purchase high value goods, property or business assets.
c. Cash being exported.

2. Layering Stage: This refers to the separation of illegal entrance of money from their source by creating complex layers of financial transactions. Layering conceals the audit trail and provides anonymity.
a. Several bank to bank transfers
b. e-transactions between different accounts in different names in different countries
c. Changing money’s currency
d. Resale of goods or assets

3. Integration Stage: This refers to the reinjection of the laundered proceeds back into the economy in such a way that they re-enter the financial system as normal business funds.
a. False loan payments
b. Forged invoices used as cover
c. Presenting income from property or legitimate business assets to appear clean

Using Information Technology to combat Money Laundering

While money laundering techniques are becoming sophisticated, so is the technology used to fight it. IT systems cannot be viewed as perfect solutions for Anti-Money Laundering techniques, but current packages have following to offer. Use of these packages enables banks to know and understand their customers and their financial dealings to help them manage risks prudently.

1. Competent for Name Analysis
2. Offer case based account documentation acceptance and rectification
3. Assess Money Laundering Risks at both Account and Customer levels
4. Rules-based systems
5. Include Statistical and Profiling engines for monitoring customers
6. Use Neural Networks and Link Analysis to detect frauds
7. Time sequence matching to prevent Hawala cases
8. Can monitoring transactions for suspicious activity
9. Helps ensure compliance to Banking or Financial standards for Anti Money Laundering
10. Investigation Tools

Effect On Our Economy

Money laundering is one of the ongoing problems facing the international economy. The economic effects are on a broader scale. Developing countries often bear the brunt of modern money laundering because the governments are still in the process of establishing regulations for their newly privatized financial sectors. There is also a growing realization about the extent that money laundering and its relationship with organized crime are interlinked.

The huge profits that accrue to these criminals from areas such as drug trafficking, international fraud, arms dealing, trafficking in human organs, will be used not only to facilitate ongoing operations, but to consolidate the wealth, prestige and respectability of those in control of the criminal business.

Hawala transactions have a huge impact on the economy. Various commercial activities get influenced. In fact, the price of land has been spiraling due to the activities of this mafia. The root of the problem can be traced to the policies of Government both at the Centre and the State. Inflation, rise in the land prices and circulation of black money are among the effect of money laundering methods circulating in the system. If left uncontrolled, it would lead to creation of a parallel economy which will destabilize our country. These artificially created inflated financial sectors create errors in economic policies. Massive influxes of dirty cash into particular areas of the economy that are desirable to money launderers create false demand, and officials act on this new demand by adjusting economic policy.

Issues on a local scale relate to taxation and small-business competition. Money from illegal activity is often untaxed which means the rest of us ultimately have to make up the loss in tax revenue. Also, legitimate small businesses can't compete with money-laundering front businesses that can afford to sell a product for cheaper because their primary purpose is to clean money, not turn a profit.

Money Laundering is a major concern because of its scale, its capacity to exploit and influence the legitimate business world and its capacity for internationalization. These concerns have led to concerted international action for a solution to combat this growing menace called Money Laundering.

Typo-Squatting - In the Spotlight

A dangerous cyber practice known as Typo-Squatting is in spotlight again. Attackers or Typo-squatters register domains using common misspellings of popular brands, products, and people in order to redirect consumers to alternative websites.

Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter. If the intended website is "example.com"

• A common misspelling, or foreign language spelling, of the intended site: exemple.com
• A misspelling based on typing errors: xample.com or exxample.com
• A differently phrased domain name: examples.com
  
• A different top-level domain: example.org

Once in the typo-squatter's site, the user may be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site; through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts or content.

Westside in Mumbai stores your credit card numbers..

Hi,

If you are a Mumbai local, I am sure you would have visited Westside - one of the famous retail shops. I happened to bump into their store in Andheri(W) Infinity Mall and to my surprise, when I gave my credit card for swipe, they swiped it twice. :(
- Once on the processing machine and second on his computer.

I asked the fellow, "Why are u swiping my card twice?"

He replies, "Sir, we need to store your card information for tallying it at the end of day."
I was really disturbed by this. They stored my name, card number and expiry date. Only thing remaining was the CCV number. Remember this is generally a 3 or 4 digit number usually at the back of the card.

I am surprised that these merchants are allowed to store credit card information. No PCI compliance required ??

I felt like calling up the media - Mumbai Mirror, DNA or Times and yelling them that see these guys....what are they upto ?? Why the hell are they storing credit card information and if they need it, why is is not encrypted??

A hacker's mind would surely think of compromising their database having thousands and thousands of credit card holders information.

To add to all my fuss that day, they gave me a printed receipt to sign off and that too printed my entire credit card number (none of the digits were masked) and even the expiry date.

I am sure there are many such places in mumbai where credit card information is stored and is highly likely for hackers to get inside them very easily. If the merchants or shop owners do not bother to care about the credit card information, they must be banned from handling these transactions.

I wanted to raise my voice for all the people who actually opt for credit card transactions. Please make sure and shout if you find they are storing your credit card information. If they are swiping the card twice for their sake. This is illegal.

Visa / Mastercard and other card issuers must look into this matter asap.

Please send in your comments and let's raise this to get in media of possible and spread awareness.

Thanks.

Dharmesh.

You can be arrested for using free Wi-Fi

A Michigan man has been arrested and will be prosecuted for using a cafe’s free Wi-Fi network from his car without buying anything.

According to reports, Sam Peterson says he didn’t realize he did anything illegal until he was cuffed (nor did the cafe owner or even the police officer).

Prosecutors believe him, so they’re letting him off easy with a $400.00 USD fine and 40 hours of community service.

So let me get this straight - $400.00 and 40 hours of community service is considered being let off easy?

Apparently under Michigan’s “Fraudulent access to computers, computer systems, and computer networks” law, Peterson’s actions could result in a five-year felony and a $10,000 fine, so I guess the answer is yes.

If the prosecutor and the cop believe him, they should just let the guy walk completely.

Moral of the story… if you plan on using the “free wireless internet” at your local Cafe Coffee Day, Cross Word Store or other favorite hangout, be sure to buy something before hand.