Cybercrime

Microsoft announced Monday that it was partnering with Unisys Corporation and Baltimore Technologies to design, develop, and market a Windows 2000-based software package that incorporates Identrus, an electronic identity verification system. The new product will allow loan officers at financial in...

Microsoft announced Thursday that it had taken legal action against two online Florida businesses for alleged distribution of counterfeit software. Additionally, Microsoft announced that it had been awarded a total of $162,000 in settlements and judgments stemming from legal actions the company h...

Just as one six-figure online auction scam on eBay was finding closure, eBay has begun investigating another, according to published reports Wednesday. This time, the alleged fraud involves the sale of over US$400,000 in gold and silver coins and bullion, which were allegedly never delivered to ...

Two men pleaded guilty Tuesday in Sacramento, California federal court to scamming eBay users out of US$450,000 over two years by self-bidding on their own auctions to drive up prices. Sacramento attorney Kenneth Walton and Scott Beach, of Lakewood, Colorado, were indicted in March on charges ...

An elaborate Internet scam involving fake banking documents worth approximately US$3.9 billion has been shut down by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), London-based ICC Commercial Crime Services announced Wednesday. According to the ICC, the fraud involved the use of fake European banki...

A month after announcing that its customers' credit card information was exposed to hack attacks, Bibliofind.com said Thursday that it will move its operations to the site of its parent company, Amazon.com. Bibliofind informed customers and merchants this week that it will take up residence in ...

A single act of "economic mass victimization" is likely to hit a broad spectrum of e-commerce customers in the next two years, according to a report released Friday by Gartner. Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner said that the theft will occur in small amounts over a widespread base and go undetec...

The U.S. Customs Service and the Moscow City Police cooperated to shut down a Moscow-based Web site called Blue Orchid that was selling child pornography, the agency said Monday. As a result of the investigation, 15 arrest warrants were executed in the U.S., and four Americans and five Russians ...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Monday that it has filed suit against a Florida Internet company, Families On Line (FOL) and two executives for allegedly bilking Christian investors out of almost US$4 million. The suit, which was filed in a Miami federal court Friday...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued an advisory Thursday warning that several organized hacker groups, operating out of Eastern European hubs, have stolen proprietary information from hundreds of e-commerce and online banking sites, including customer databases and more than one...

Despite widespread consumer fears about online credit card fraud, the No. 1 scam on the Internet is Web auction fraud, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center. Internet auction fraud was the problem in ...

Online scam artists contributed to a 50 percent increase in credit card fraud in the European Union (EU) last year, ringing up US$553 million in illegal transactions, according to numbers released by the European Commission (EC) on Monday. To stem the tide, the EC has launched an ambitious thre...

The white knight who pulled European e-tailer from the brink of bankruptcy at the last minute this week is a convicted hacker turned venture capitalist, a UK newspaper reported Thursday. The Manchester Guardian reported that a German venture fund that supplied US$2.3 million to Letsbuyit this week ...

The Worldwide E-Commerce Fraud Prevention Network, whose members include Amazon.com, American Express, Buy.com and Expedia.com, has announced the launch of MerchantFraudSquad.com, a new site dedicated to combating online fraud. MerchantFraudSquad is the first initiative of the Network, a non-pr...

Internet auction fraud accounts for 87 percent of all incidents of online crime, according to a new study released Tuesday by eMarketer. As part of its "ePrivacy & Security Report," eMarketer also found that more than 34 percent of Internet users have been targeted by a Web-based privacy or ...