You know those annoying emails everyone gets, the ones with official looking pictures from some random bank you don’t even have an account with informing you that you need to punch in your non-existent account details or your bank balance will self destruct?

Yeah the ones with the dodgy clickable URL’s written in HTML to appear legit but actually link to commbank.com.au@somescamsite.lololol.com.au.

What would you do if you managed to catch one of the  distributors of these emails red handed? I can think of a few politically incorrect things I’d be willing to do but what about you personally?

Whatever it is you’d want to do to them, I’d be willing to put money that it’s more then Australian justice system did.

Australian’s are pretty clueless when it comes to internet scams losing an estimated thirty six million a year to cyber fraudsters. These days anyone can download bulk emailer software, register a bogus domain and start their own internet phishing business. That’s exactly what twenty two year old Brendan Roy Taylor did.

After nabbing 60,000 credit card users details from the very same emails I mentioned at the beginning of this post Taylor then tried to sell his bounty online. Unfortunately for him an undercover cop posed as a buyer and he was later arrested and charged.

With an estimated success rate of 14%, to successfully trick 60,000 individuals Brendan Taylor must have sent out a whopping 428,571 emails. This wasn’t just some kid sitting there with outlook express.

Cyberpolice must have been left scratching their heads and wondering why the hell they bother showing up to work when Taylor was convicted and sentenced last week to a $150 fine and 12 month good behaviour bond.

Who knows the financial damage that might have occurred had Brendan been successful in hocking off his stolen goods. Maybe the police might have had more luck charging him with fashion crimes instead.

Amazingly there has been no mainstream media coverage of this story and the only source I tracked down was a scan of a newspaper article from a WA paper.

This I believe is the perfect illustration of just how much of a mediocre joke cyber crime is in this country. Thank god I’m not the only one who’s noticed, Paul Ducklin writes:

Firstly, calling a convicted cybercriminal “a nerd” is in my opinion rather like referring to a wife-beater as an “overly vigorous chap”, or an arsonist as “stoked with burning ambitions.” It trivialises the nature of his crime, providing it with a veneer of harmless-sounding criticism.


Exactly.

If the judge is beyond understanding the potential severity of the crime then quite frankly we need new educated judges hearing cybercrime cases. The details of court cases going over the heads of judges should not be an excuse for such light sentences.

Perhaps instead of shoving an unwanted internet filter down our throats, Stephen Conroy should actively be looking into why the Australian legal system takes cybercrime so lightly.

I mean where’s the deterrent? You get fined more in Australia for not buying a valid train ticket on Connex then you do for stealing and trying to sell 60,000 credit card details.

Can someone explain to me how the bloody hell that works?

1. Jessi Slaughter – Proof an internet filter is a joke