节目资讯
刊物:科技前沿
日期:2009-10-05
难易度:Medium
关键字:infiltrate, fraudulent
(Music).
New methods.
The popularity of social networking sites has been a boon for scammers.
”They can infiltrate your Facebook account and send e-mails to your friends,
saying, ’I’ve been in a skiing accident,’ and they ask for money,” said John
Kane, author of the crime center’s annual report.
”If you think it’s from a friend, you might consider sending something.”.
Fraudulent e-mails looking like authentic messages from a person’s bank can be
sent to cell phones.
Scammers can also break into sites of professional or social organizations, then
use the information to target victims,
who in turn think the messages have validity because the sender seems familiar
with their job or lifestyle.
The advances in technology, Kane said, would probably have increased the number
of scams in any case,
but the sudden downturn in the economy made things worse - in two respects.
”You have tech-savvy individuals who are out of work and turn to scamming as a
means of income,” he said.
”They do this for a living, and they do it very well.”.
But more obviously, the tight times has made some people desperate for money,
and more susceptible to scams.
OK. So new methods of scamming people online.
I’m Naomi, and I’m here with Charlotte and Howie today.
We’re talking about Internet scams and how the world of Internet fraud is
changing a little bit for a couple of reasons.
And what are they, first of all?
Uh, the economy. The economy is bad, so people want money and they’re gonna
steal it from you.
OK. What else, Charlotte?
I think, um, just the advance in technology has made people more able and
finding new and different ways to get money from others.
OK. And we see right at the beginning of this section that we have a great
example of that, right?
Right. We have, um, social networking sites.
And I think we’ve all been hearing more and more about these different sites
like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter,
where you are mostly talking with people that you already know in real life.
But this is a boon for scammers.
And a boon... scammers.
A boon means something that is very helpful,
and it can be something, for example, like if a government decides to give, um,
stimulus money to the people,
well, that can be a boon for the economy and for the shoppers and also for the
retailers who are getting that money.
Mmhm.
So a boon to something sort of encourages it. It’s some... some activity or some
thing that happens that helps something along.
All right.
So social networking sites have really given scammers, people who are involved
with the Internet fraud, new opportunities.
That’s right.
And we’ve covered these social networking sites in... in previous Advanced
articles...
Facebook, Twitter, uh, MySpace.
These are all ways that you can interact with your friends and maybe even meet
new people.
But unfortunately, these scammers can infiltrate your Facebook account, and
”infiltrate” is a very... uh...
I guess it can be used in many ways, but here it means to secretly get into your
account, uh, to kind of like hack.
We use that word ”hack”.
To hack into account and you don’t know what happened.
Yeah. OK. If someone infiltrates something, we get the idea that they’re really
sneaking in.
They’re getting into something but they’re not being very obvious about it,
and so they infiltrate the system.
And in this case, someone can basically break into your account, or as you said,
Howie, hack in.
And then they can send e-mails to your friends.
Now this is...
If it weren’t so terrible, it would be brilliant, right?
Right.
Because of course, if you get an email from a stranger, you’re probably not even
going to open it. You’re just gonna delete it.
But when you see your friend’s name, well, of course, you’re gonna trust your
friends. You have every reason to.
Right.
So if your friend sends you an e-mail and says,
”I’ve been in a skiing accident, and I need some money,” well, then if you think
it’s your friend and you think it’s for real,
then you might actually send the money.
That’s right.
And because it’s coming from... someone that looks familiar that you know,
you’re more likely to trust it.
And that’s why these fraudulent e-mails, they look like authentic messages.
Now I haven’t gotten one like this, but I have gotten e-mails from friends where
it’s sort of like, ”Click here and you could win something.”.
And because it’s from my friend, I sort of think, oh, maybe there’s something to
this.
But then I think, oh, that doesn’t sound like that.
I don’t think that my friend would actually send that. And sure enough, I got a
follow-up message from the friend saying,
”Oh, please ignore that e-mail. It wasn’t me. I don’t know what happened.”.
And that’s pretty scary to think about.
And what’s happening on Facebook is your friend most likely clicked on an e-mail
or some kind of link and that cause... It’s like a little virus.
It attaches itself into the... that person’s account and then it’s going to
automatically send e-mails to everyone in their friends list.
And that’s why you got it.
Right. Pretty scary.
Going on to the second paragraph in the second column, Charlotte, line 5.
Well, not just people we trust, but authentic-looking messages may be from our
bank,
because a lot of scammers now are copying the logos and copying the websites,
and they can send it to your e-mail or even to your cell phone.
You can get a message that looks like from your bank,
and it says, maybe, there’s a problem, you need to send some money, you need to
pay this fee...
And then it’s another way that they can get your money.
Yeah, OK, that we use a word here: fraudulent.
Hmm.
”Fraudulent” means... the intention is to trick you to deceive you.
And we actually covered this also in previous articles. It’s called phishing.
You’re gonna get an e-mail, you’re gonna get a message that looks like it’s from
your bank or your credit card, but it’s not.
And what’s gonna happen is you’re going to log in to this fake page, and then
they’re gonna have your password.
They may even get your credit card number or your bank account.
Right. Phishing, P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G, um, is this... exactly what you said, Howie,
this idea of breaking in and trying to get information from people.
Now continuing on line 7, scammers can also break into sites of professional or
social organizations,
then use the information to target victims.
Um, professional or social organizations.
Well, those could be organizations that somebody might support.
For example, maybe you donate money to different charities.
And so if the scammers can get the list of all the donators, all the people that
have contributed,
well, they have people who’ve already given money in the past, who would be more
likely to do in the future.
OK.
I think there’s even more going on here.
Um, if we talk about targeting victims, it means you’re...
you’re, uh, setting something up; you’re trying to get all the information so
that you can attack this one particular person.
So if I think about all the websites that I sign up on and that I give
information to, there’s a lot of them:
anywhere where I shop online, um, maybe some of my different social networking
sites, uh, maybe, uh, some sort of organization sites, some social connection.
There are so many sites where you can sign up with your passwords.
Photo sharing sites.
So basically, if someone’s looking at that, they’re breaking into your
information,
then they know things about you based on your online activities, and that lets
them target you more specifically.
You have to remember, listeners, that these people, they... what they want to do
is they want to get information about you.
If they can get your password...
And most people, they don’t change their password.
So if you have one password on one website, it could be the same on five others.
And if they have that password, maybe they can log into your bank account.
Maybe they can log into your e-mail.
Mmhm.
But there’s something else here. It says... uh, line 9:
They’ll target victims who in turn think that the messages have validity because
the sender seems familiar with their job or lifestyle.
Validity.
Well, if something has validity, it is valid or true or genuine, so it’s
something that can be believed or be trusted.
Mmhm.
Right.
So people will get this message and think, ”Oh, well, this person knows that I’m
interested in photography, um, therefore it must be from my friend.”.
Therefore... You know, they can rationalize that this could be something true,
something real.
But in fact, it could just be because these people have been targeting them.
The... the scammers have been looking at their online activity, and then they
use that to their advantage.
That’s right.
And then we see the next paragraph. It says that the advances in technology
would probably have increased the number of scams in any case.
But because of the sudden downturn in economy, it has made things worse.
OK.
Exactly.
So all of these things that we were just talking about for the last couple of
paragraphs show us that because of technology being the way it is,
it’s much easier for people to... um... to scam others online.
However, of course, the economy made things worse in two ways, Charlotte.
What’s the first one?
Well, the first one is that people who have been trained to work with
technology: tech-savvy individuals.
So if somebody is savvy, that means that they have a lot of knowledge, a lot of
know-how about something.
So I don’t think I’m very tech-savvy.
But maybe I’m savvy in some other ways.
But these people who have been trained to work with technology, maybe develop
programs,
well, suddenly, they’re finding themselves out of work,
and so they’re using their skills to find another way to make money.
Right.
So they turn to scamming.
They resort to this. They decide that they have to try this just to make some
money.
They do this for a living; they do it well.
So when they are tempted to do something illegal, they’re able to do it easily.
And so I can see why it would be a temptation for someone who’s really strapped
for cash, who really needs money to try something like this.
But what’s the other reason why?
Well, more obviously, the tight times.
And when we say the times are tight, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t fit well.
It just means that when there’s... things are scarce when things are unlimited,
such as money or jobs.
Tight times have made some people desperate for money and more susceptible, more
likely or... or easily affected by scams.
OK. Good.
Another word we use, uh, it would be vulnerable.
Susceptible or vulnerable.
We’ll cover that word tomorrow as well.
But for now, let’s go to our feature and see how some people might be dealing
with the bad economy.
Hey, Mark, how did your job interview at the tech company go?
Not great.
I don’t think I got the job.
I’m a little worried with the economy the way it is.
I really need cash.
Don’t worry.
With your computer skills, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.
What do you mean?
Easy.
You know Facebook, Twitter, and MSN inside out, right?
I noticed some telltale links on your blog.
Sure.
So you can use these sites and programs to infiltrate other people’s accounts
and persuade others to give you money.
You mean: send fraudulent messages to people to make them think I need cash?
Right.
Like I say, send a message from someone else’s account, telling all their
contacts that he’s in debt and will pay them back.
But I can’t pay them back.
Oh, they won’t notice.
Don’t worry about it.
I’m not going to victimize someone’s family and friends like that.
Fine. Then send e-mails to strangers and tell them you just need them to help
you transfer money, and you’ll give them a million dollars.
Most people are so vulnerable that they’ll send you a few thousand bucks for the
bank fees.
But I don’t have a million dollars to back up the plan!
They don’t need to know that.
This all sounds like a dangerous - not to mention illegal - plan.
You need to account for how trusting most people are.
They’ll buy it for sure, and you’ll be rich!
Oh, hey, look at this e-mail!
That tech company is offering me the job after all.
I guess I won’t need to resort to a life of crime after all.
Thanks anyway, John.
OK. Well, hopefully none of us have friends like John giving us this bad advice.
Sneaky man.
Yeah.
Howie, have you ever been tempted to use your technological powers for evil?
No, I’ve always been inspired to use my... uh... tech savvy for good, for
helping people learn English.
Oh, I think that’s good.
Charlotte, how about you?
I don’t know that I have any technological powers, but I doubt that I would
resort to scamming.
Yeah.
Well, I think though that sometimes it’s easy to get tempted into doing
something that we shouldn’t do when our financial situation is tough,
or if we feel like the situation calls for it, right?
Sure. I mean, like, these people who’ve lost their jobs, maybe they’re even
feeling angry or upset, feel like they wrongfully lost their job,
and maybe it’s almost a way for them to get what they feel they deserve.
Mmhm.
And so we need to be really careful that when these difficult things happen that
we, you know, find the right support,
that we really try to, uh, keep a good attitude and keep up the hope that we’ll
be able to do something better in the future.
And I really think that there’s a lot of opportunities out there still and that
hopefully, this economic downturn will be back on its way up soon.
All right. Well, thank you for joining us today.
We have a lot more to learn tomorrow about how to prevent these scams from
happening to you, so I hope you’ll join us then.
Until tomorrow, this is Naomi...
Howie...
And Charlotte...
Saying goodbye.
Goodbye.