Lords offer new angle on e-crime

A website for people to report cyber-crime is one idea being considered by a government committee set up to look at internet security.
The House of Lord's Science and Technology select committee will report back on how government can better deal with the threat of e-crime.

Speaking at a conference in London, chairman Lord Broers hinted at new laws to deal with breaches of data.

The committe is due to present its findings in the summer.

Reporting crime

He told delegates at InfoSecurity 2007 that a website along the lines of the US based Internet Crime Complaint Center which allows US citizens to report e-crime could be set up in the UK.

As well as providing more reliable statistics on how widespread the problem of e-crime is, such a site would also be a good way of persuading people who are reluctant to tell the police they have been the victim of online fraud.

"One of the problems is that people who, for example, have been the victim of an eBay scam tend to think how stupid they were and that there is no point in going to police. If you were mugged you would be sure to go straight to the police," he said.

"In the UK, people are being told to go to their bank first. We are not sure that is right. These are crimes and the police should be equipped to deal with them," Lord Broers said.

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[temi]

The current laws are really not adequate to cope with modern crooks online

I agree Temi.

But atleast the goverment are trying

[temi]

Yes they are trying, just that the criminals are ahead at the moment

That's true. I think Criminals will always be ahead

[temi]

Sadly that is true

One thing I don't understand. Some criminals setup websites to steal data such as usernames and passwords and account details. For example, fraud paypal emails that are going around.

It is normally quite easy to recognise these fake sites. But why aren't these people stopped. They have a domain name registered, so why is it not possible to track these people down via their domain registration details or even IP address.

[temi]

This is very common, I have seen lots of this at my hosting company

I think they are not stopped, becuase they register abroad and are hosted by huge companies like Godaddy which makes it almost impossible to reach them in time. The sites are usually online for a period and then vanish, after collecting their share of fooled users... And when you want to report them, they are already gone. Also I think the Police is not up to date with the technical skills to trace such criminals (at least not at the level of standart procedures) so it is usually treated as 'minor voulnerability' crime and is not being investigated at all, 'not to waste the resources'... Sad life...