Scams

Did Smut Spammers Scam Google?
The savviest of the savvy like Google because it's so spam-unfriendly. But one site that purports to offer pictures of celebrity nudes may have found a way to trick it. By Farhad Manjoo.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39896,00.html


FTC LAUNCHES CRACKDOWN ON INTERNET CON ARTISTS
The FTC has announced that it intends to work more closely with international law enforcement agencies to combat fraud and scams on the Internet. The online scams targeted by the FTC include pyramid schemes, credit card theft, auction fraud, and credit card charges for supposedly free material at porn Web sites. The FTC says it is launching its crackdown to increase consumer trust in e-commerce. This year alone the government has taken legal action in 251 cases involving online fraud, the FTC said. The FTC noted that the crazy quilt of laws and jurisdictions on computer crime is hindering law enforcement efforts, but the agency said it is attempting to negotiate this patchwork by establishing closer ties with consumer protection agencies overseas, including those in Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Australia. (Washington Post, 1 November 2000)


PORN SITES LURE KIDS VIA WEB TRICKERY
Pornographers are using "metatags," the labels attached to Web pages that identify their contents, to draw visitors seeking information on the holiday season's most popular toys, with the result that children surfing the Web for My Little Pony, Barbie or Muppets could find among their choices not only toy retailers but such sites as www.picturesofanalsex.com. Envisional, a UK company that specializes in searching the Net for trademark violations, said it has found nearly 12,000 examples of toy names being used this way. A British attorney noted that using registered trademarks in this way is illegal, as is using metatags to drive children toward obscene material, but that such laws were difficult to enforce, given the worldwide reach of the Internet. (Financial Times 16 Nov 2000) http://news.ft.com/news/industries/media


DISAPPEARING PORNOGRAPHY
Re: http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=2807 A quick check reveals that the article on which "Porn Sites Lure Kids Via Web Trickery" is based is probably false. A search for "My Little Pony" on Alta Vista didn't reveal any porn in the first two pages of hits. A search for "My Little Pony" and "anal" still gave me only toys. My final test was to visit www.picturesofanalsex.com and investigate their method of fooling search engines. They do indeed attempt to outsmart the searchers using hidden text -- but the keyword they load up on is "porn pictures". There are no toy names anywhere on their front page -- visible or invisible. Incidentally, the front page contains a prominent notice stating that the site contains offensive pictures that are intended for viewing by adults, and contains no actual imagery.

Clicking on "I agree" leads to another page that again has no images (other than a map of Europe) and a "you must be over 18" warning. Following *that* link finally brings up pictures -- head shots of three women. To get beyond that, you must have a password from adultcheck.com. I stopped at that point.

My conclusion is that this is one more case of hype by people seeking to promote their own brand censorship. (Geoff Kuenning)


How Much for .brooklynbridge?
Cyber-wildcatters are buying up domain names in registries that have yet to be created and may never be. Confusion reigns, as evidenced by the fact three people believe they own www.sex.web. Buyers beware.
By Oscar S. Cisneros
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38653,00.html


FTC CHARGES GLOBAL PORN RING WITH PHONE FRAUD
The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in federal court Thursday alleging that Verity International, which is registered in Dublin and is no relation to the California software company Verity Inc., improperly charged thousands of U.S. Internet users for long-distance phone calls. The porn customers were told they were being charged to view sex videos over a phone line to Madagascar at a rate of $3.99 a minute, but the FTC determined that the calls actually terminated in the U.K. and should have cost only eight cents a minute. Verity planned to pocket the difference. The scope of the scam was huge -- in a single week in September, some 67,000 U.S. households received bills from Verity, with an average overcharge of $222 (although some overcharges topped $4,000). Interestingly, the agency used an off-the-shelf software program called NeoTrace to locate the alleged perpetrators. According to NeoTrace's manufacturer, NetWorx, the software is used by the FBI, the U.S. Customs Service, NATO, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Interpol to trace the geographic origin of Internet traffic. (Wall Street Journal 6 Oct 2000)
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB970787581170382228.htm


Court Blocks Web Sex Scammers
A couple of Brits whose website routed users seeking video sex through expensive long-distance phone lines get their assets squeezed by a U.S. judge.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39298,00.html

Sex.com

Judge Orders Sex.com Returned
In a sordid saga of sex, fraud and domain registration protocol, a federal judge rules that the domain name sex.com be returned to the San Francisco entrepreneur who registered it six years ago. By Joanna Glasner.
http://www.wirednews.com/news/business/0,1367,40380,00.html


S_X ON THE NET: "LESS DISGUSTING AND SICK-O"
A federal district court in San Jose has ruled that a certain three-letter dot-com domain name [that might get us filtered from libraries if we were to spell it out] must be returned to its original owner, from whom it was transferred six years ago through a forged letter. The successful plaintiff said that the ruling "shows that eventually the little guy an win at a great cost [$500,000]" and added: "I plan to do something not as sick-o as this guy [the defendant]." The judge ordered the defendant to put $25 million in escrow pending a determination of how much the plaintiff had been deprived by the misappropriation of the valuable name that can't be spelled. (Wired.com 28 Nov 2000)
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,40380,00.html


A Case of Sex Appealed
A legal battle over the sex.com domain rages on. The porn site's former operator files plans to appeal a ruling that returned the domain to its original owner. Lawyers for the opposing side dismiss the move as a desperate last-ditch effort. By Joanna Glasner.
http://www.wirednews.com/news/business/0,1367,40544,00.html