节目资讯
刊物:科技前沿
日期:2009-10-05
难易度:Medium
关键字:infiltrate, fraudulent
Advanced Studio Classroom is on the air.
The Internet is changing with these financial times.
Are you keeping up? Or are you at risk?
(Music). Hi, friends, welcome to another day of Advanced Studio Classroom. My
name is Naomi.
And we are looking at - I think it’s our second or third article for the month
already - our second article for the month of October.
It’s an INTERNET article about some of the dangers of being online.
Uh-oh! Stay tuned.
Are you in suspense yet, Howie?
I’m always in suspense, Naomi, especially when it comes to Internet articles.
Yeah, it’s true.
There’s a lot of mystery around the Internet, I think.
That’s right, especially now, because sometimes you click on something and you
don’t know what you’re going to get.
That’s true.
And in some ways I think that’s good.
There’s a lot to be discovered online, and there’s a lot of different programs
and interesting things to discover.
Also with us is Charlotte.
Charlotte, what do you think about the Internet?
Hi, everyone.
Well, I’ve actually had many e-mail hacked once before, and it was such a
terrible feeling.
So I think it’s really important that we do learn about the scams that are out
there so that we can protect ourselves better.
OK. So although the Internet is full of interesting things to discover, it’s
also full of dangers and what we might call pitfalls,
things that we can, uh, come across that might give us some problems.
That’s right.
I think for a lot of new users, it’s a very exciting thing. They’ll... ”Wow,
there’s all this information!”.
But then I think a lot of people who are just beginners, uh, just learning
Internet, will soon find out that there are a lot of dangers as well,
that there are people out there to want to steal their identity or steal their
money.
Ah. So once again, Charlotte, when we talk about scams, can you tell us a little
more about that word?
Sure. Well, in this article, we’re going to be learning a lot of words: scam,
fraud and rip-off,
for these all mean things where you are cheated out of something, or someone
takes something from you under false pretenses.
OK. So you are tricked into giving something up usually, um, and of course,
often it has to do with money.
That’s right.
We’ve done articles on cyber crime and all these kind of Internet scams.
But this one is different because the economy hasn’t been good,
and so now we find that there are more of these people trying to trick others,
and... and Internet users are more susceptible.
They’re more vulnerable now because maybe they want to get some money and then
they’ll get tricked into giving it by accident.
OK. So we’re... we’re more likely to get tricked these days because everyone is
looking for money; everyone is concerned about money.
And anyway, we think we might be able to get more.
We might be tempted to try it, even if it’s not totally safe.
That’s true.
Sometimes people are so desparate that even if it sounds too good to be true,
they want to hope that maybe this time it really is true.
OK. If something sounds too good to be true, that’s a good idiom, actually.
You wanna talk more about that, Charlotte?
Sure. Well, usually we are pretty cynical about things, so we think that if it’s
really that good, there’s probably some kind of scam or catch involved.
So if we say that something sounds too good to be true,
we’re saying that there has to be a downside to it; it can’t be as good as we
really think or as it’s presented to us.
Right.
If someone said, ”Naomi, you’ve won a trip! You get to go to Paris,” I’d be
like, ”Oh, that sounds too good to be true. What’s... what’s the catch?”.
And they say, ”Well, you’re right. You have to teach English while you’re
there.”.
Then I’d say, ”OK, that sounds all right.”.
But usually if something sounds too good to be true, it is.
That’s right.
Yeah.
All right.
So we have some examples today of plenty of things online that sound too good to
be true and that are too good to be true.
Um, and so we see some of the problems and some of the tricks that we can come
across.
So we’re gonna look at those more in detail, and hopefully this will be able to
help you prevent getting ripped off online.
So I hope you’ll join us.
We’re on page 14 of your Advanced magazine, and we’ll begin with that first
paragraph.
The New Internet Scams.
Technology and the sour economy breed Internet rip-offs.
Scams are as old as history.
But Internet fraud, which already had been accelerating with each technological
innovation, has been given a new opportunity with the economic downturn.
A 2008 Internet Crime Complaint Center report found that scam reports to the
center had increased 33 percent over the previous year to a record 270,285
complaints.
And figures for the first three months of this year ran about double those in
the months covered by the report, a center spokesman said.
Another agency - the Federal Trade Commission - said it compiled 1.2 million
complaints last year from a variety of law enforcement sources up from 230,600
in 2000.
Wow, what a pleasant reading voice.
Oh, Howie.
You’re too kind.
All right, page 14, what do we see?
Well, let’s, uh, look at the deck.
It says technology and a sour economy breed Internet rip-offs.
OK.
Well, when I think of a sour economy, the first thing that comes to mind is like
sour milk.
Mmhm.
Like something that was fine but now it’s slowly gone bad.
And I think we’ve been seen that over the past years, so that things have just
seemed to be getting worse and worse or kind of sour.
Yeah.
And sometimes when we use the word ”sour,” it doesn’t mean ”taste”.
It means something becomes unpleasant.
So sometimes a relationship can go sour.
Maybe a friendship, uh, has gone bad.
You would say it turns sour.
OK, good.
And ”sour,” I like that word because ”sour” also makes me think of, like you
said, Charlotte, milk that’s gone bad.
It gives that weird taste and leaves a terrible taste in your mouth.
And often when we’re talking about something that’s unpleasant, we say that too:
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
Hmm.
It gives you that after... afterimpression, that aftertaste that something isn’t
quite right; it’s unpleasant.
And so the sour economy...
You’re right. It was doing fine but now it’s just going bad, and it does leave
people kind of unsatisfied, unhappy.
And so the new technology that’s been developing which is an ongoing thing,
and if you add to that this economy that’s going bad, what happens?
It breeds Internet rip-offs.
”Breed” means to produce.
So because of this new technology, Internet technology, and a bad economy, it’s
gonna produce more and more of these frauds and scams.
It’s kind of like a perfect or ideal environment for this, like a breeding
ground.
Ooh.
Sometimes we talk about somewhere that has all of the factors that make
something grow very quickly - we call it a breeding ground.
Like, this water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
OK. Good. Good.
So these two things come together and what they produce is Internet rip-offs.
All right.
Well, looking at the first line, page 14, scams are as old as history.
That’s a very funny little metaphor there, I think, or a simile.
”As old as history”.
Yeah, it’s like they’ve been happening ever since people have been around.
And I think we can see that in the past too that even though maybe this word
scam hasn’t been around for a long time,
people have always been cheating each other and lying to each other.
OK.
But?
But Internet fraud, which has already been accelerating with each technological
innovation, has been given new opportunity with the economic downturn.
There are a lot of good words in that sentence.
OK. So first of all, accelerating.
Accelerating means to happen faster, to speed up.
So because of... Like what, uh, Charlotte said before, because of all the bad
economy, it’s happening at much faster rate.
Right. I think of a... a car accelerating, you know.
And so these conditions, um, mean that Internet fraud is accelerating.
In this case, we’re talking about technological innovation.
New creativity that... that happens with technology does help people get better
at Internet scams.
It’s an unfortunate downside.
But it’s also combining with this other factor, right? That’s been given a new
opportunity...
With the economic downturn.
Well, we can see that, you know, when you look at a chart of, you know, savings
or things like stocks, you know, everything’s going down.
So maybe a downturn, we can think of something like that where everyone really
is losing money.
So even though we usually think of innovation as a great thing, creative people
aren’t necessarily using their innovation in positive ways right now.
OK.
The economic downturn.
Charlotte, I think the image that you gave is a good one: when you think about a
chart with the lines going up when things are good,
but then when people lose money, they go down; the line goes down.
So you can visualize that.
That’s what’s happening to the economy all over the world, but especially in the
States.
And so we are talking a little bit about, uh, the condition of Internet crime in
the States.
Going to the next paragraph, Howie, we see that there’s a 2008 Internet Crime
Complaint Center report.
Hmm, that’s right.
Yeah.
Um, and reports have increased 33 percent over the previous year and to a record
275,285 complaints.
So, uh, there are 33 percent more complaints than the previous year.
OK. So basically, if people are victims of Internet crime, they can call up this
center and say, ”This is what happened to me.”.
And when they do, well, once upon a time, just... just a couple of years ago, it
was already a lot of people.
I think almost 300,000 people... complaints.
That’s a lot of complaints.
But the really significant thing here is that this number has jumped 33 percent.
Now we continue with another statistic, Charlotte.
Well, it says that the first three months of this year, the figures or the
amount or the number of complaints has actually been double those in the months
covered by the report.
So that means that even shorter time the number has actually doubled.
Mmhm.
All right.
Finally, there’s a third agency that reported.
There are a lot of agencies in the U.S.
The Federal Trade Commission, it compiled - and ”compile” means to gather or
collect - 1.2 million complaints last year from a variety of law enforcement
sources.
So 1.2 million, that’s an incredible amount.
It is, from law enforcement sources.
We’re talking about law enforcement, Charlotte.
Well, of course, that includes the police.
Probably, um... like it says under the picture, we have the secret service,
maybe the FBI and all these different divisions that are working to enforce the
law or to uphold the law.
So they’re trying to prevent crime or deal with crime.
OK. Good.
Now it said 1.2 million complaints.
Now in 2000, there were only 230,600.
So we can see that this has increased a lot.
And yet, of course, the Internet has gotten more popular and so it makes sense
that it would increase.
But by such a significant amount, it’s a little discouraging, I think.
That’s right. It has increased almost five times.
Well, actually more than five times.
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely scary because most of us use the Internet all the
time, right?
And now people are getting encouraged more and more to do a lot of things on the
Internet, like buying things, putting their credit card numbers and bank on the
Internet.
So I think the opportunity for fraud is even higher.
Mmhm.
And because Internet access is becoming easier and easier.
these people, these scam artists, as I would call them, they’re targeting new
users because they’re not as familiar.
So if you’re not careful and you’re a new Internet user, you could be in
trouble.
OK. Well, we’re going to see some more... um... some more hands about exactly
what happens and to who and how in the rest of today’s reading.
So we’re still on page 14.
We’re just at the bottom of the first column, line 19, and we’ll continue the
reading: Newmethods.