The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held a forum on e-Crimes to gather multi-stakeholders and explore the cyber crime situation today. It is also the forum's goal to find both preventions and solutions to cyber crimes, such as phishing, pharming, etc. At the same time, the forum was aimed at finding a method of recovery for end-users who have become victims of these proliferating cyber crimes.
The forum was co-sponsored by the At-Large Summit (ALAC), which serves as the representative of common Internet end-users in iCANN. It is regarded as one of the major highlights of the 34th ICANN Meeting.
ALAC explained that this forum is necessary and extremely relevant since online global consumers are getting more and more frustrated, feeling that there's no one to attend to them when they find themselves victims of cyber crimes.
Frederick Felman of MarkMonitor gave a wide overview of cyber crimes, and he mentioned that phishing is the most damaging form of abuse against common Internet users so far. An estimated $3.2M loss has been recorded so far. On top of that figure, a lot of consumers haven't reported being victimized due to shame. Therefore, the forum was opened to gather opinion from the experts on how to protect the consumer from this kind of abuse.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Bedser of the Internet Crimes Group showed how organized crime uses the Internet and the DNS to complete criminal acts against end-users. He described how e-Crime is able to take advantage of resources from virtually any user and provider in the Internet.
In conclusion, Jeffrey summarized the root of e-crimes in one word: profit. Having said that, he called on everyone to get involved in finding a solution, be on guard against attacks without merely relying on experts to solve the issue. Global participation is needed in confronting cyber criminals before it could go to a bigger level such as cyber terrorism.
From this point on, the Internet end-users all over the world can expect that ICANN through ALAC and related organizations will continue to seek ways to combat cybercrime and protect the global users against it. (AMP) |
