"Phishy" Feud Blocks Net Fraud Protection

We have all received them: emails allegedly from Bank of America, or Citibank, or any of a host of financial institutions warning you to update your account information at their web sites or risk losing access to those accounts. These emails, of course, contain instructions for “updating” your account information; simply click on the link in the email and your account log in screen will appear. Hopefully by now most people are aware that these emails are an insidious and all too common fraud scheme labeled “Phishing,” and what the cyber criminals are “phishing” for are user ids and passwords to your accounts.

The link in the email takes you to sites that look identical to your bank or credit union or credit card log in screens, but in reality are sophisticated imitations whose sole purpose is to capture your user ids and passwords as you enter them. Cyber criminals receive your information in real time and weeks later, when you review your credit card or bank statements, you will be shocked to discover unauthorized credit card charges and that your bank accounts have been methodically siphoned of your hard earned money.

The technology exists to eliminate these fake web sites, and would be relatively easy to implement, saving victims of this crime from the stress, time, and often money involved in restoring their accounts and eventually their identities. What is holding up the implementation of Phishing prevention on the Internet? According to a UPI report by Shaun Watterman, international distrust of the U.S. Government and global envy of its strong position to control much of the Internet’s infrastructure are the culprits, and online consumers are paying the price, literally, for the petty political spat.

The www Web addresses we are all familiar with actually represent Internet Protocol (IP) numbers that serve to direct Internet traffic to the corresponding web page requested. Faking or “spoofing” these Web addresses and IP numbers is fairly simple. I learned how to do it in minutes in a government training course years ago. The security problem that makes these fraudulent web sites possible is a lack of digital authentication that would direct traffic only to real sites.

When you manually visit your bank’s web site (not following any links to it), you can rest assured that you are visiting the authentic site. However, there is currently no system in place that prevents Phishers from using the real site IP address in the links they email to potential victims while the link actually leads to an imitation web page. As reported by UPI, the U.S. Government has funded a program to authenticate all web domain names (www Web addresses) and establishing “keys” that identify whether you are visiting the bank’s real or fake web site.

Unfortunately, the question of who will hold the keys to the authentication system is hampering the progress of this important consumer protection measure. Some concern has been raised by international Internet organizations and some governments that whoever holds the digital keys would be the lone entity in the world capable of spoofing IP addresses and domain names, without explaining why they are worried about the U.S. government doing so. This is where the anti-American sentiment comes into play, as the U.S. already controls the “Root Zone” that controls .com, .org, and other large top level domains. The U.S. proposal for global authentication does not assert that the U.S. should hold sole control of the authentication keys, and even leaves the door open for a trusted contractor to manage the Root Zone. Foreign governments, though, distrust the U.S. enough to block this important development, apparently being more concerned with obtaining a piece of the pie than with consumer protection.

It is unclear whether the international Internet organizations will ever come to an agreement over who will ultimately control the authentication keys, thus placing the implementation of such a system in jeopardy. Fortunately, the U.S. government is prepared to act unilaterally to impose Root Zone authentication on the domains under its control: .gov; .com; .org; and .us. One thing for certain is that under no circumstances will the Root Zone key be given to any Nigerian, Russian, or former Soviet state government agency or contractor, as the vast majority of these Phishing and similar identity theft related scams currently emanate from those areas.

Thankfully, as a consumer you have the power to manually authenticate the Internet sites you visit by inputting the www Web names or following links created by you or someone you trust. Keep in mind that no financial institution ever calls you by phone or sends you email requesting information they already have, such as your name, Social Security Number, account number or PIN, etc. If you receive such a phone call, capture the caller id if possible, refuse to provide any information, and report the incident to your financial institution and to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. If you receive an email, identify it as spam to your ISP and future emails should go straight to your “junk” or “bulk” folders. Report the incident to the IFCC, linked above. Many products on the market, such as Norton Internet Security 2007, Earthlink Protection Center, and most popular newer web browsers offer built-in scam blocking or Phishing detection features that are quite effective.

When it comes to Phishing and online fraud, private sector companies such as Symantec are light years ahead of governments in the effort to provide immediate prevention tools to consumers. While Internet-wide site authentication would be a tremendous boon to Internet security and commerce, it may be years in coming due to international wrangling over the “keys.” Teenage siblings arguing over car keys seem only slightly less juvenile.

Robin Hood Was No Socialist!

Social Security; Medicare; Medicaid; low income housing subsidies; food stamps; government welfare; all of these could be discontinued and the needs of former recipients of government largess will still be met, if research conducted at a California university is put into practice. Of course, that is not the conclusion that the academicians involved in the study reached, but the researchers may have inadvertently provided support to conservatives who favor lower taxes and more involvement by private and religious charitable organizations in caring for America’s poor.

CNN (Reuters) reported last night that a computer lab research project involving 120 students at UC-Davis demonstrated a “Robin Hood” impulse shared by the majority of participants that produced interesting results. According to the CNN piece:

The experiment was carried out last year using 120 paid student volunteers at a computer lab on the campus of the University of California at Davis.

The volunteers sat at computer terminals, and a computer would assign them into groups of four. Once placed into a group, each person was assigned an amount of money and was told how much money the other three members were given.

The players then had the chance to spend some of their own money in order to increase or decrease the amount the others possessed, but their actions provided no financial gain for themselves.

They played the game five times, but never with anyone from a previous group. This was to eliminate the possibility of players trying to establish a reputation for themselves or taking revenge on others who might have taken money from them.

Equalizing income
About 70 percent of participants at some point reduced or added to another person's money, most often by taking from the richest players or by donating to the poorest players, the study found.

These actions had the collective effect of equalizing income among the players -- with participants spending their own money to achieve the goal.
The researchers said even players whose own loot had been pilfered in previous rounds were willing to take steps to redistribute the money in an egalitarian manner.

The term “Robin Hood impulse”, used by Professor James Fowler to describe his findings, is only partially correct. When the players took money from the wealthiest players and gave it to the poorest players, they were exhibiting “Robin Hood” tendencies. However, when players spent their own money to equalize resources among the other players, they were acting charitably. The difference between the two motives is significant and should not be excluded from the reported findings.

The key aspect of these findings is that the players voluntarily spent their own money to help strangers who were struggling financially, out of a sense of egalitarianism. The game, designed to test egalitarianism and its role in human interaction, demonstrated that players consistently sought to share resources even when they did not stand to benefit from that action. There is another term for that, charity, but given the religious implications of that word, academia apparently shied away from applying it to the behavior exhibited by these students.

It is interesting to note that President Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives, which allow the government to “outsource” charitable services to religious organizations already engaged in providing aid to their communities, are roundly criticized on the left for relying too heavily on human charity to care for the poor. These critics are averse to any diversion of taxpayer money away from established bureaucracies. The argument from these critics is that people are selfish and will not redistribute their resources voluntarily to help the poor in their communities, thus the government must take that money by force and give it to the needy or they will not survive. Private or religious charities are never given a fair chance to demonstrate that citizens, out of the same sense of egalitarianism displayed in the UC-Davis study, will rise to the occasion and ensure that the needy among them are cared for.

Instead, government demonstrates in impulse that is much more “Prince John” than “Robin Hood”, in that it forcibly takes an ever-increasing percentage of income from the “rich” and instead of immediately redistributing it to the poor, often hoards it, earns interest dividends from it, and eventually reassigns it to other pressing budgetary concerns. Americans generally are imbued with a sense of fair play, and in that regard possess a “Robin Hood” impulse: we want to voluntarily give our money to charities rather than to greedy government officials who hoard it like the Sheriff of Nottingham.

It should be remembered that Robin Hood was not a socialist. He was not stealing from the rich to give to the poor in a classic redistribution of wealth (at least in the wildly entertaining Disney version). He was actually recovering the people’s money from the government, which had overtaxed them so severely that they could no longer care for the needy among them through their own charitable acts. In essence he was putting taxpayer money back in taxpayer pockets, perhaps a medieval "compassionate conservative." Who among us has not looked at the amount of taxes withheld from a paycheck and felt as pained as Disney’s Robin Hood character whose leg cast was thumped and searched for hidden money by the Sheriff of Nottingham? In that sense, Robin Hood was an egalitarian motivated by charity, who clearly felt that the poor were better cared for by their neighbors and communities than by a distant government unfamiliar with local circumstances.

The fact that 70% of the college students in this study, who have not yet entered the real world of supporting a middle class family on a tight budget and have not yet learned to appreciate how wrong it is to forcibly take money from some to give to others, robbed from the rich to give to the poor, is not particularly surprising. Yet even these students dipped into their own pockets (figuratively) to help level the economic playing field. Private and religious charitable organizations should be given more opportunities to demonstrate that through citizen generosity the needy in local communities can be provided for with less government involvement and state controlled redistribution of income. Likewise, America’s workers should be allowed to keep more of their income, which, as this study illustrated, would result in more donations to local charities.

The “Robin Hood” impulse appears to manifest itself, if unimpeded by the government, in actions that look, to the discomfort of secular academia, like charity. Government assistance programs are the antithesis of charity, for the giver is forced and the recipient is deprived of recognizing the loving sacrifice behind a voluntary donation. Robin Hood risked his life to help the poor, and charitable Americans would willingly do likewise if government loosened its stranglehold on public assistance programs. After all, there is a little of Robin Hood and a divine spark in each of us.

Reid & Pelosi Ignore Allies on Timetable

The irony of the day award belongs to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Congressional Democrats who refuse to meet with President Bush to discuss the Iraq War funding bill. The irony lies in the fact that the Democrats have thus far refused to present President Bush with a “clean bill” that does not set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq, while at the same time the heads of state in Iraq and Jordan are urging the U.S. not to abandon Iraq prematurely or set timetables for withdrawal. Apparently the Democrats' "alternative foreign policy" mandates that traveling to and counseling with Syria and Iran (terror sponsors extraordinaire) is good, but listening to Jordan (an ally) and Iraq (democratically elected Prime Minister and ally) is bad.

President Bush is often vilified by the left for his “unilateral” decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, and for ignoring French and German leaders who opposed military action in Iraq. This “cowboy diplomacy,” the left claims, hurt America’s image among Europeans and, to use a Kerry-ism, made America “an international pariah.” In an effort to address this criticism of his political personality, President Bush has frequently engaged Iraqi leaders and solicited their opinions as well as those of regional heads of state (except for Syria and Iran, who are waging war on the U.S. within Iraq). In these open discussions with world leaders, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has a much better view of what is occurring in his country than Democratic Congressmen, has advised President Bush since last October not to set timetables for withdrawal.

The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, echoed this sentiment, warning America that early withdrawal from Iraq and setting timetables “without preparing the necessary conditions that would ensure a strong central government able to run the affairs of the state and an Iraqi force able to ensure security and stability, may only worsen the problem and contribute to increasing violence and conflict among Iraqis.”

Prime Minister al-Maliki, clearly frustrated by the timetable issue, stated that a timetable was not necessary because his government “is working as fast as we can.” The impatience for Iraqi progress displayed by the Democratic Congress has been shameful. In reality, the Democrats are attempting to set a timetable for a sovereign foreign democracy that we have committed to preserving until its government can fully defend itself to achieve self-reliance.

The timetable issue is a prime example of President Bush being “darned if he does and darned if he doesn’t” when it comes to counseling with world leaders. When he counseled too little with Europe before Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was roundly criticized as a “cowboy.” When he counsels now with Middle Eastern leaders who oppose a timetable, Harry Reid and Congressional Democrats refuse to meet with him unless he accepts their imposed timetable regardless of the fact that Iraqi and Jordanian leaders advise against it.

As Americans, our commitment to defending democracies should be open-ended. It has been with Israel, another Middle Eastern democracy, so why are the Democrats so eager to shorten or completely end our commitment to Iraq? Is it because it is a Muslim democracy and Democrats do not believe Muslims capable of living within a democratic society? If it is not the soft bigotry of low expectations, what fuels the maniacal timetable frenzy? We committed to defending European democracies imperiled by Nazi fascists in WWII, but for some reason Democrats refuse to commit to defending a Muslim democracy from Islamic Fascists sworn to quench the flame of freedom in the Middle East.

Imagine if after Hurricane Katrina a foreign nation provided thousands of men and heavy machinery to rebuild the city along with New Orleans residents, but after a few years the foreign nation’s leaders decided that since the local residents were not rebuilding fast enough, the reconstruction was no longer worthwhile and imposed a timetable on the storm ravaged citizens of New Orleans or help would be withdrawn because of the high violent crime rate. What was once a compassionate and generous offer of mutual assistance would have become the stick in a carrot and stick approach to diplomacy. Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi have been holding that proverbial stick over free Iraqis for selfish personal political motives.

The mixed messages sent by Democrats on this issue would confuse any president. Should he listen to the counsel of world leaders or not? The President is right to reject any attempt to include a timetable for withdrawal in the war funding bill. Perhaps if Speaker “For Assad’s House” Pelosi visits the Middle East again, she should take Senator Reid along and together they could look Prime Minister al-Maliki in the eye and tell him they just do not believe Iraqis will ever be capable of sustaining a democracy and are thus not worth defending. Then they could jet to Amman and explain to King Abdullah II that they know better than he does and he is wrong about timetables and their influence on a war being waged across his border.

The left claims that President Bush is arrogant, but the Democrats’ efforts to micromanage the war, impatiently criticize Iraq’s courageous and fledgling government, and conduct their own foreign policy have set a new standard of arrogance.