Scams and the Dark Web The Dark Web, just the name strikes fear into the hearts of many of us because we have been told much of our personal information is being sold there. There are even commercials which show someone buying information like they are in a store buying candy or food. Another reason the Dark Web scares us is the government has been telling us terrorists are using it to communicate in code to each other over it. Some people are telling us not to listen to the stories of people using it to buy our information but most of us know our information is out there, mainly not because of anything some of us have done, but because companies and government agencies are careless with it. One has only to look at the headlines for the last few years to realize just about everyone in the United States has had their information stolen if they ever used a credit card, a bank, a hospital or was ever in the military or many other organizations just to mention a few. When companies or agencies lose our information, it is not just a few people who are affected but sometimes hundreds of millions. Even credit agencies, which were never given permission by us to collect our information lose it and go unpunished. That is one of the things which really annoys me. These companies sometimes have extremely weak or no protection for our data and when it is lost, they just keep going on their merry way. There is no doubt that until these places get punished for the way they are handling our data they will continue to treat it like garbage. One of the problems is the story we have been sold about the Dark Web. According to some experts the story we have been told which seems to indicate there is a vast web below the one we normally use is really not the case and this statement makes sense. The reason it makes sense is the everyday web we use can easily be made to hide offers and transactions and they could easily be taking place unknown to us. Maybe the authorities don’t want us to know this for some reason, I wouldn’t know about that, but from what I have heard most of the transactions take place on the regular web in places we don’t know about. The truth is so what, who cares where it takes place? The important thing is to stop it, but unfortunately that is impossible under current treaties with other countries. If someone is committing a crime against you on the web and they are in a non-treaty country which has no extradition for crimes against us, they can continue to commit their crimes. Some experts have said instead of calling it the Dark Web, it would be more accurate to call it the Dark Spot or Nook. It is such a shame something as incredible as the internet, a device which connects the entire world for the first time is being abused by a few criminals who are making many lives miserable. They prey on the elderly and sick among others and in some cases take their life savings at the most vulnerable times of their lives. One case which seems to be the most annoying to me and which disappointed me the most was when the VA allowed a worker to take a laptop computer out of the VA building and the person went on the train with it. The laptop had the information of millions of veterans on it and he left it on the train and the information was stolen along with the device. It is bad enough when a company does something and our data is not protected and stolen, but when the very agency which was established to protect veterans doesn’t protect us, it seems even worse. One of the more prominent scams involves software attacking your computer and making your important files unreadable. They have been encrypted and only the encryptor has the key to unlock them. He then sends you a demand for money to do just that. If you pay, they usually do unlock the files. This type of attack is called ransomware. It is predicated on the fact you don’t backup your software and also on the fact you have important information on your computer. Because of these facts it might only be an annoyance to some people who would just reinstall Windows or what ever operating system they were using and a few games. Spear phishing is an attack some people are still falling for. It has to do with convincing you to click on a link in an email. You will be sent an email telling you something like this is your bank and someone may have taken money from your account and asks you to click the bank link and enter your id and password. When you do you can kiss the money in your account goodbye. There is another method which is used. It is called Whaling. You are sent an email which looks like it is from someone in your company, a high level executive. It is used to gain information. One like this was used to get into a company’s payroll and get all the employees’ personal info. One method which one would think no one would fall for is called Smshing. You are emailed a form which states it is from your bank or the government and told you have to fill it out. Canadians were fooled when the forms said they had to be filled out to get a tax refund. There are just so many ways we can be fooled. Nigeria has become a country famous for its scammers. The most famous scam is where you are sent an email saying you can get a lot of money by helping someone sneak money out of Nigeria or somewhere else. They offer hundreds of thousands of dollars. When you agree they begin to bleed you. They tell you they need money for transactions and such and the scam just keeps going until you finally get tired and realize they are stealing from you, or you run out of money. Another of their scams is where they pretend to be from the Internal Revenue Service and tell you that you owe taxes and must pay immediately or go to jail. They also pretend to be from the FBI or Medicare. It is such a shame scams like this are allowed to continue. It seems to be there has to be a way to block these sites. An example might be if Nigeria keeps allowing these activities, block all Nigerian sites and this would go for any country which makes this a cottage industry.
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