WORLD: Riding the tsunami wave

Fraudulent websites about tsunami victims fool do-gooders into giving in donations that never reach the correct place

The Times of India
Tuesday, February 8, 2005

By Tanya Chitanya

Surfing on the tsunami wave, fishy cyber fraudsters are at it again. Contributions for the tsunami victims are flowing in from all quarters of the world, specially via the Internet, but cashing in on this charity overflow are identity thieves who've established fraud web sites. Cyber con artistes are increasingly hosing down charity plans bigtime!

These fraud sites, complete with images of the catastrophe and updated information of relief programmes are intended to deceive prospective contributors into providing their credit card information.

Says Muneesh Prasad, a software engineer at a management institute in the city, "Help requests from the victims and their families are sent via e-mails of various individuals and vital information is stolen from the receivers' computer, when they click on links given in the mail. The mail, accompanied with a picture of a tsunami victim would read something like this: This 16-year-old girl has lost her family in Aceh and has no support. Please donate money to help give food and medical treatment to her. Extend a helping hand towards those who need you."

For all those of you who thought that sitting in a far, far land, sending charity for the needy through Internet is a piece of cake, this should come as a warning. Like Sumer Shukla, who almost donated his money to a fake tsunamit site recalls, "I received an e-mail from an unknown individual who claimed to be dying of a terminal disease and stated that his dying wish was to help a tsunami hit victim. The mail describes how the sender was afflicted by the medical complication and how now he wishes to donate all his earnings, a substantial sum, kept in a European bank, to the victims of the tsunami, albeit anonymously. The sender then asks for assistance to transfer his money into the receivers' bank account so he can dispatch it to tsunami victims. The mail ends with the sender wanting the receiver of the mail to contact him through the private email address given alongside. Though a moving story, it sounded rather false. On cross-checking with my brother, who's a computer expert, I came to know that had I contacted the sender, I'd have been charged a service fee, just for contacting even if I hadn't furnished information."

Not just e-mails, the websites that can be connected to via a search engine need to be thoroughly cross-checked before any money is committed to the cause. Says Vishwas Mishra, a senior computer executive in an MNC, "One should be careful about using search engines to find relief organisations. To quote an example, suppose one types in the search engine to find out about the China Charity Federation's website. Now though the organisation's authentic site is www.chinacharity.cn, the surf search shows www.chinacharity.cn.net, using an additional .net."

So watch out before that dot com turns to dot con!

Date Posted: 2/8/2005