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Dealing with computer crimes

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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 04:16 PM
  #1  
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Dealing with computer crimes

Hello all, today I found out my fiancee's online game (which is paid for via credit card) was hacked into and gave the account information out to several other people. She contacted EA Games regarding the incident, and according to them, we have to contact our local police to resolve the issue. The thing is though, I'm not entirely sure our local police can or will actually do anything, even though it is a form of fraud. Anybody else have experiences in the past with this sort of thing? By the way, she knows the email address of the person who did it, if that is of any use. Thanks in advance.
 
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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 05:11 PM
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Credit card crimes, via www is a form of ID theft... I believe your best bet would be to call your local (or closest) FBI office. Contacting EA is the right thing to do too, though I don't AT ALL understand why they would tell you that they will do nothing to help you. Doesn't make any sense to me. In fact, THEY should have contacted HER.

STan

More details?
 
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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 05:15 PM
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I agree with Traxxis, since it more than likely involves interstate transactions, get the FBI involved.

At a very minimum, contact the local police and file a report. And I'm sure you have already, but contact the credit card company and inform them. They have their own fraud departments and I'm sure they would like to go after the culprit as well.
 
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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 05:26 PM
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Can we assume you contacted the credit card company first to let them know about it ? If you give them all the info about this person their fraud division should go after him. All the police do is take a report about this kind of thing and put it in a file somewhere. All this enthusiasm by the police to catch bad guys is only on TV.
 

Last edited by nightowl_52; Jun 20, 2005 at 05:34 PM.
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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 05:33 PM
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From: Claremore
Originally Posted by nightowl_52
Can we assume you contacted the credit card company first to let them know about it ? If you give them all the info about this person their fraud division should go after him. All the police do is take a report about this kind of thing and put it in a file somewhere.
oops... guess I shoulda asked this question first... lol



Good advice.

STan
 
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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 05:44 PM
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The first thing to do is cancel the credit card, then do the other stuff.
 
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Old Jun 20, 2005 | 11:49 PM
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Not to hijack the thread, but while I was in college,

A "freind" stole a credit card and used it all over town, including at walmart. The CC company told me to contact the local cops, which I did. I explained that If uI saw the walmart video, I could 100% identlify the user. Walmart didnt want me to see it, the Cops told me I was wasting my time and thiers. VISA footed the bill and didn't care...
 
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Old Jun 21, 2005 | 01:17 AM
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This is tjay460's wife (he's making me type that before I can reply....)

Since the information was sent over the internet, the juristicion is automatically federal because it's a crime committed between interstate lines, unless of course, you can prove that the hacker was within the same state as you are. FBI is the way to go.

I have a question though. How did you discover that she was hacked? In order for her to be hacked, she had to have some type of remote access program (like a trojan horse) running on her computer. And are you sure that she was hacked? It's been all over the news that CitiGroup "lost" in excess of 400,000 credit card accounts from THEM being hacked. And all the credit cards weren't necessarily CitiGroup, but also some of their subsidies.
 
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Old Jun 21, 2005 | 01:21 AM
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It wasn't just Citigroup- a number of major banks and American Express were involved. This theft ID thing can be a really long, nasty road. Pray there wasn't a family-member or close friend involved. don't ask me why I mentioned that.
 
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Old Jun 21, 2005 | 01:23 AM
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If understand correctly she has an EA games online account (most likely ultima online). The EA system in secure to an extent, but hackings do occur. Usually what happens in that instant when the non-secure web based login page jumps to secure mode after entering the username and password, someone picks it up. I always used a really messed up password.. Something terrible, or an alphanumeric one.. Something that would either be hard to figure out or hurt at the sound of typing it.
 
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Old Jun 21, 2005 | 07:38 AM
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You should still report it to the local police. They probably won't do anything, but you will need a report number to refer to when filling out paperwork.
 
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Old Jun 21, 2005 | 11:22 AM
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From: Claremore
Originally Posted by tjay460
This is tjay460's wife (he's making me type that before I can reply....)

Since the information was sent over the internet, the juristicion is automatically federal because it's a crime committed between interstate lines, unless of course, you can prove that the hacker was within the same state as you are. FBI is the way to go.

I have a question though. How did you discover that she was hacked? In order for her to be hacked, she had to have some type of remote access program (like a trojan horse) running on her computer. And are you sure that she was hacked? It's been all over the news that CitiGroup "lost" in excess of 400,000 credit card accounts from THEM being hacked. And all the credit cards weren't necessarily CitiGroup, but also some of their subsidies.
You raise a good point. It is not likely that a hacker-who is good enough to actually do any damage to anybody- would get into a personal pc... unless they knew the person. There just isn't enough people (just yet) who are completely dependent upon the www for financial transactions, therefore the vast majority of us aren't in much danger when it comes to financial situations. Typically when somebody hacks a personal pc... it is usually malicous (sp?) in nature... and is for the sole purpose of causing trouble for the person (i.e. deleting files... updates... emails, whatever).

STan

P.S. It's not so much that computer crimes are FBI jurisdiction because of location, but rather the reason that it's most often dealing with ID theft. "Hacking" in and of itself is listed as a Federal crime under the "Wire fraud" chapters.
 
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