Criminals thriving in the virtual world
Mar 11 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal
To highlight how easy it is for criminals to prosper in the virtual world, the SCDEA sent one of its officers into Second Life to investigate its potential as a breeding ground for crime and within two months he had managed to set up a virtual brothel.
“We couldn’t have made the internet any better for the criminals,” said the SCDEA spokesperson. “In investigations in the old days, in the real world, the crime scene was something physical [and] the criminal couldn’t enter an environment without leaving traces of his existence there, like a shoe print or a hair.
“We always had a route to access the perpetrators. We also had snouts, touts and informants but in information communications technology, these things don’t exist.
The key to crime in the virtual world is currency. In Second Life, the world revolves around the Linden dollar – a virtual currency which is pinned to the US dollar.
Although virtual currencies have no real world value, they can be exploited as a vehicle to generate and launder real money, according to an e-crime consultant for a major bank, who also visited the recent anti-fraud event in the North East.
“Anyone who thinks that virtual worlds don’t matter or thinks they are not going to have an impact and effect us, are wrong.
“As well as primary exchanges in virtual worlds, which are well regulated, there are also secondary exchanges when people set up in a virtual world and offer to exchange real money for virtual money.”
According to the consultant – one of only a handful of e-crime experts employed by banks in the UK – some virtual worlds allow users to set up their own bank with nothing more than an addressed letter.
Criminals can also embed web links into the virtual environment which take consumers to an external site, allowing them to steal information from their PC and hijack their avatar.
“If I had half a million pounds to launder I could go to Entropia Universe (a virtual world run by a Scandinavian firm), I could falsely set up hundreds of avatars with false documentation and purchase virtual land and property, sell them on, then cash the money back out so it appears legitimate in the real world.”
Another worrying trend in the virtual world is the use of anonymous accounts, used to protect a user’s identity who may be involved in some of the seedier virtual activities such as strip shows or adult chat rooms.
However this also makes it harder for the police to catch a criminal in the pixelated universe, says the e-crime expert.
“In order to protect people, virtual worlds allow anonymous accounts which don’t appear on your credit card so if someone is involved in fraud, how can we trace them?”
As virtual worlds encroach more and more on our world, it seems inevitable that lawmakers and the police will have an increasing number of fraud- related issues to deal with. Legislation is also hindered by the fact that virtual thieves can target UK businesses from a server on the other side of the planet, making it almost impossible for the British police to bring them to justice.
While the police struggle to get to grips with the evolution of online crime, businesses looking to tap into the potentially-lucrative virtual economy are urged to focus on fraud awareness.
NEFF chairman Alan Brown, who calls on North East firms to join the region’s anti-fraud body, says: “Just as we are looking at preventing and detecting fraud in 2009 in this world we are also conscious of many people in the region who operate in the virtual world which also might be susceptible to being victims of fraud.
“This is a new dimension we are learning about all the time and it’s reassuring to know that we have access to experts within our own region in the North East so we can advise local businesses.”
Page 3: Second Life in first position
