Everyone has heard of the Nigerian Internet scam where someone posing as a high member of a foreign government tries to defraud naïve people over the e-mail. Few people, however, realize the extent of Internet fraud. It goes far beyond the scam e-mails that you see in your inbox every day, far beyond the Internet viruses that you are warned about in the news. Basically, fraud on the Internet is a multibillion dollar business. Back in the day, Internet hacking used to be something done by young men as a way to prove their online abilities. They would hack into a system just to show off to their friends. Although sometimes they would crash systems doing this, in general they did very little damage. It was just a game for them, and although it was a game that governments and businesses hated, it didn't do very much damage to them.
Today, Internet fraud can take many different forms. Nowadays, most people are smart enough not to get scammed over the e-mail, but nonetheless the same people get ripped off over eBay all the time. There are Internet dating scams, online auction scams, spoofing, phishing – you name it and someone has probably already ripped someone off with it. Sometimes, an Internet scam means that you lose a few thousand dollars. Usually, you can recover from something like this and get back on your feet. Sometimes, however, Internet fraud is much worse than this. People have their identity stolen over the Internet every day.
One of my friends had his identity stolen. He didn't have any kind of identity protection, and he wasn't using a secure, encrypted system. Basically, he did everything wrong in the way most of us do everything wrong. Like most people, he didn't worry about it until it was too late. Because of that, he had thousands of dollars of property charged in his name. It ruined his credit and nearly bankrupted him.
Although he eventually recovered from Internet fraud,his experience should be a lesson to all of us. He was not even able to successfully sue the people who scammed them. They had excellent lawyers working for them, and were able to cover their tracks too well. Basically, he had to eat some of the losses and go on with his life. If he had taken a few simple steps for some Internet fraud prevention, however, things would have been much different. It would've been a lot easier for him.
