[Year 12 Its] 'YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE'

[Therese Keane]

You may find Monday's Four Corners to be of particular interest as a
resource to use in the classroom.

________________________________________

Therese Keane

 

Director of Information Technology

Kilvington Girls' Grammar

2 Leila Road

Ormond, Vic 3204 

 

Phone: +61 3 9578 6231

Fax:     +61 3 9578 3378

 

www.kilvington.vic.edu.au

 

 

'YOUR MONEY AND YOUR LIFE' - 4 CORNERS MONDAY 15 AUGUST 

Next on Four Corners: Quentin McDermott investigates cyber-fraud, the
crime of the 21st century, revealing a new security breach involving
Australians' personal data.

"Bad guys are winning the war. There's no question bad guys are winning
the war..." - data security consultant Alan Paller.


It's a global war being fought by governments, police, spies and the
titans of banking. The enemy is everywhere in cyberspace. 

If you hold a credit card, or use the Internet for financial
transactions, you are a potential victim. At stake is not only your
money, but your identity.

In Australia, credit card fraud and identity theft cost hundreds of
millions of dollars a year. Internationally, some estimates put the cost
of cyber-related identity theft at more than $200 billion - bigger than
the entire cocaine market.

Recently about 130,000 Australians became casualties of a massive theft
of data that compromised the details of up to 40 million people
worldwide. Cyber criminals hacked into a US-based credit card processing
company, CardSystem Solutions, which processed transactions for Visa and
Mastercard. This crime was first detected not in America but in the
backrooms of the National Australia Bank's Melbourne fraud unit.

High tech variations on old con tricks abound. One of the biggest is
"phishing". It's the email offering you something or, worse, pretending
to be from a reliable source like your bank or insurance company. The
email directs you to a website that looks genuine and invites you to
submit further personal details. Some of these phishing web pages are so
sophisticated that they sit like parasites on the real websites of
reputable companies and institutions.

Such techniques are not solely for greedy but peaceful hackers. Four
Corners examines the potential for terrorists to accumulate funds
through cyber-theft. One of the convicted Bali bombers has already
written a how-to guide for young jihadists.

Can cyber-theft be countered? Experts who police the net are
pessimistic, not least because so much personal data now exists in
insecure data banks around the world. Recently the Sun newspaper in the
UK exposed a data-selling racket by employees of Indian call centres
that service large global companies.

Now Four Corners has obtained evidence that individual Australians'
private data is for sale on the international market to anyone who is
willing to pay for it.

If, like many Australians, you're in the habit of giving out information
to perfect strangers, this report will make you think again.

Quentin McDermott reports on 'Your Money and Your Life' - Four Corners,
8.30pm Monday 15 August, ABC TV.

This program will be repeated about 11pm Wednesday 17 August; also on
ABC2 digital channel at 7pm and 9.15pm Wednesday.


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