Credit Crunch causing CyberCrime Shift

The "Credit Crunch" is not only fuelling more cyber crime and online fraud, but the latest malware, phishing and fraud trends show the credit crunch is having an affect within the sinister cyber criminal underworld. It seems the bad guys are having trouble opening new fake accounts, obtaining credit cards with stolen identities, and are even having trouble getting store credit using fake identities.

Why? Well it is because the financial industry have been cracking down and fully vetting credit applications (about time). You really have to ask why it has taken the near collapse of the world's financial system to kick financial institutions into properly checking just who they are actually going to provide credit to, after all that’s what caused all this credit crunch mess in the first place, right?

So this is good news on the identity theft front, but as always in cyber fraud the bad guys just move onto the next lowest hanging fruit, and so are increasingly going after active bank accounts and active credit cards. Which in itself is kind of interesting due to the consumer credit crunch factor, as I guess everyone will be generally be a lot more careful with their money, and therefore will be checking through their bank and credit card statements more often. A lot fraud simply goes undetected due to a particular technique employed by the bad guys, where they embellish small amounts of cash on a monthly basis directly from people accounts. This goes unnoticed by the victims, simply because the victim isn’t scrutinising their statements. According to "ID Theft Protect (Aug07)", 90% of people never check all their transactions on their bank or credit card statements, which underlines why these types of fraud are so successful and can really add up over a long time period.

I mean there are even some legal companies which dupe people into adding a small monthly standing orders on their accounts and credit cards, usually within the small print, or even by illegal means! I had a very popular UK motoring recovery organisation charge a renewal against my credit card without any pre or prior notification recently, even though the account they charged against for was for my wife! I actually had a completely separate account setup with them, they linked the payment details from my account to the other.

So be extra vigilant with those statements, you never know what you might find and save!

Credit Crunch to drive UK Cyber Crime

As the effects of the “global credit crunch” starts to take hold in the UK, it is evident to me that UK focused “Cyber Crime” will sharply increase as a result. Over the past ten years the UK economy has been in a honey-moon period, and doing relatively well, with the GDP growth out pacing the rest of EU. The good and steady economic environment has resulted in low unemployment figures for much of the last decade. You really have to go back to the late 1990’s since the last major loll in the UK economy.

In comparison, mass market cyber crime for financial gain hardily existed ten years ago, and certainly was not on the radar during the last major recession in 1990’s. Over the last decade Internet access and usage for the average UK person has radically changed, thanks to the explosion of broadband, which in turn has resulted in providing cyber crime opportunities around every corner.

Within the Security Industry it is commonly known hackers have been increasinly focusing their efforts on attacks which yield financial rewards as opposed to the traditional attacks for the challenge, fun, or kudos. For example the number of original viruses being created for the sake of causing disruption, which often has no financial benefit for the perpetrator has been dropping, while attacks for financial gain for the perpetrator, such web application attacks, phishing Emails and key loggers installations have been rapidly raising in the last few years. On the back of this, the amount of personal information being placed and made available on the internet is increasing, providing a rich gold mine for cyber fraudsters and identity thieves.

There are many analysts and reports stating economic slowdown and raising employment results in increases in crime, and in particularly fraud crime. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080901/tpl-britain-politics-economy-crime-5b839a9.html Fraud crime fits cyber crime like a glove. Putting this economy and crime trends together with the trends in security and cyber crime with financial motivation (fraud), since the last major economic slow down in the UK, I can only conclude one obvious outcome, namely the credit crunch will drive a serious increase in cyber crime in the UK. It will be very interesting to see if the future official figures on UK online card fraud reflects this trend. Just about every person I have spoken to about cyber crime fraud in recent months has themselves, or knows a family member, friend, or work colleague, who has been "done" with credit card fraud as a result of something which occurred online during the last 12 months.

So I urge everyone in the UK to buckle up their anti-malware software, check their paper shredders, to be eagle-eyed reviewing credit card/bank statements and to keep extra vigilant when online as we sail through the choppy water of the credit crunch.