Social Engineering and Financial Fraud Committed Over The Internet ~ What To Look For ...

Social engineering (security)

Social engineering is commonly understood to mean the art of manipulating, Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics.

By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive. people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.

The people who need to hide their crimes say it is similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, the term typically applies to trickery or deception for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or computer system access; in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the global criminals/victims.

Accusers say "Social engineering" as an act of psychological manipulation was popularized by hacker-turned-consultant Kevin Mitnick. Global criminals name the term as associated with the social sciences, but its usage has caught on among computer professionals

Social engineering techniques and terms

All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases. These biases, sometimes called "bugs in the human hardware," are exploited in various combinations to create attack techniques, some of which are listed here:

Pretexting

Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Announces Results of Largest-Ever Nationwide Operation Targeting Investment Fraud

“With this operation, the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is sending a strong message,” said Attorney General Holder. “To the public: be alert for these frauds, take appropriate measures to protect yourself, and report such schemes to proper authorities when they occur. And to anyone operating or attempting to operate an investment scam: cheating investors out of their earnings and savings is no longer a safe business plan - we will use every tool at our disposal to find you, to stop you, and to bring you to justice.”

December 09, 2010

Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Announces Results of Largest-Ever Nationwide Operation Targeting Investment Fraud

Please go to link and read this ~News release: "Attorney General Eric Holder announced the results of Operation Broken Trust, a nationwide operation organized by the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to target investment fraud.

To date, the operation has involved enforcement actions against 343 criminal defendants and 189 civil defendants for fraud schemes that harmed more than 120,000 victims throughout the country.

The operation’s criminal cases involved more than $8.3 billion in estimated losses and the civil cases involved estimated losses of more than $2.1 billion. Operation Broken Trust is the first national operation of its kind to target a broad array of investment fraud schemes that directly prey upon the investing public."

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/December/10-ag-1390.html