October 2008 Archives

By most recent polls the U.S. presidential race will not go down to the wire, but if it should the winner may be decided by a new group of voters: those Americans under thirty who have more or less been raised on bits and bytes and who are now given their first chance to flex political muscle.

These are the children of baby boomers. In the last election, less than half of eligible voters under thirty actually dragged themselves to the polls; even so making up seventeen percent of the total vote. There is, however, strong evidence that a far higher percentage of the bits and bytes generation will turn out this time and that most of their votes will go to Barack Obama: The bits and byters may well come to Obama's rescue.

Statistically, youth turnout has risen steadily since the 2000 presidential election, but this year it has soared. During several state primaries, youth turnout doubled, some even tripled, compared with 2004.

And not only that, bits and byters, who overwhelmingly oppose the Iraq war and President George W. Bush's policies--and who can blame them--have done more than just vote; they have jumped into politics--to be sure, their style of politics: using Facebook to share information at a phenomenal pace, raise money, and set up rallies, and mostly for Mr. Obama. They have also used YouTube, in its infancy during the 2004 campaign, to reach millions of potential voters through music.

All signs are that they are very motivated about this election, and that they may well decide its outcome. This may come as a surprise to some pollsters, but should not when you consider what happened at the start of the primary season. In Iowa in January, Obama lost decisively to both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the thirty-plus vote, while he won the under-thirty vote by a 5-to-1 margin, enough to propel him to victory.

Those bits and byters are still for Obama; in fact, two-thirds of them say they are Democrats. According to John Della Volpe, director of polling for the Harvard Institute of Politics, the youngest age bracket (eighteen to twenty-four) favor Obama over John McCain by more than twenty percentage points; and it's unlikely that the choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential nominee will change that, given that young people are much less socially conservative than she is.

Obama's huge lead in the youth demographic may be partially obscured by current polling techniques. Although most pollsters do call people on cell phones, they still rely primarily on landlines, according to Della Volpe. Better than half of the eighteen to twenty-four bracket do not even own land-line phones, he said, and as a rule have sharply different views on the big issues--the war(s), the economy, who should run that country--than those who do.

Of course, it's still not a given that young voters will in fact Obama into office, but the bits and byters are turning into a political juggernaut that will dominate and change U.S. politics in the future. They have the numbers to do it: By 2015, once they are all old enough to vote, they will comprise a full third of the electorate; and they have at their fingertips the most powerful information, organizing, and mobilizing tools--and know how to use them.

And they will most likely not settle for politics as usual. Having grown up on the instant communication of bits and bytes they will want to be involved in the act of governing by contributing ideas before decisions are made. What's more, they serve as a collective watchdog that will ensure that politicians do keep their word: if they don't, millions will know about it a few keystrokes later.

So, no matter who wins, the new president will have a tiger by the tail.

And this just in:

In a poll that has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since it began running in 1992, classroom video news network Channel One has Barack Obama trouncing John McCain by a 17-point margin, with 58.5% of the vote to McCain's 41.5%.

Several million teen voters have Obama taking every single swing state except Missouri, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Let's hope so.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-based Ulf Wolf writes about the Digital Divide and Cyber Crime for Words & Images (ulf@words-images.com)

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, cybercrime is up again for 2007. Hardly news, of course; it is no secret that this plague is spreading farther and deeper by the hour.

And here's another unsurprising piece of news: at the head of the pack, same as last year: Internet Auction Fraud.

The FBI Numbers

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NWC3), recently released its 2007 figures on cybercrime complaints received and referred to law enforcement.

Again, the numbers showed that Internet Auction Fraud was by far the most reported offense in 2007, comprising at it did 35.7% of all complaints (see Chart below). In addition, during the same period, the non-delivery of merchandise and/or payment from non-auction internet transactions represented another 24.9%, pegging the combined total of on-line sales related fraud complaints at 60.6% of all Internet fraud.

Internet Auction Fraud

What far too many users fail to realize is that when something is purchased via an Internet auction, it is not bought from the auction house (say eBay, or Yahoo) but from an individual or company. The auction site--acting as a go-between--merely provides a forum where individuals can trade with one another, and it usually adopts--and prominently displays--a firm policy of washing their hands of legal responsibility for any loss suffered from using their service.

Once the bidding has concluded the payment for and delivery of the goods bought and sold is negotiated between the purchaser and seller. If the item is not delivered after it is paid for or is not what was represented on the auction site, the auction house will not refund any money. It is up to the buyer to approach the seller to negotiate a fair and proper settlement.

The statutory warranties that normally cover trade do not cover goods bought at on-line auction. The seller's only obligation is to give clear title.

Therefore, keep the following in mind when dealing with on-line auctions, or whenever you buy anything online, especially from a private party:

• Understand how the auction works, what your obligations are as a buyer, and what the seller's obligations are before you bid.
• Find out what actions the auction house will take if a problem occurs, and consider insuring the transaction and shipment.
• Be aware that if a problem does occur with an auction transaction, it will be more difficult to resolve if the seller is located outside the United States--laws can differ widely country to country.
• Learn as much as possible about the seller, especially if the only information you have is an e-mail address.
• Before you make a payment for an auction purchase, you should verify the seller's identity and contact details in case there is a problem with the delivery of the item.
• Ask the seller when delivery can be expected and whether the merchandise is covered by warranty if you need to exchange it.
• Use registered or certified mail to enable tracing; this will eliminate claims that the parcel was sent but must have been "lost in the mail."
• Check that the auction account information matches email, phone number and any bank account and location information.
• Use auction house feedback forums to check out the seller's history before agreeing to pay any money. Please note however, that sellers sometimes post positive feedback on themselves or organize other people to do so on their behalf.

And here is the most important advice of all:

• If you have any doubts about the integrity of an on-line auction seller--and even if you're not: use an escrow agent. An escrow agent or company is an independent third party which holds payment in trust until the buyer receives and accepts the item from the seller. While this service does incur a fee, it protects the buyer because the third party will hold the money until the goods have been received in good condition, inspected, and accepted; and only then released to the seller.

Internet Escrow

The principle and process of Internet escrow is the same as with buying and selling real estate--where, of course, the escrow company is deemed indispensible due to the amounts involved.

• The buyer or seller opens an account with the online escrow company;
• The prospective buyer of an item sends payment by wire transfer, check or credit card to the escrow company;
• The escrow company verifies that the funds indeed do exist, or that the buyer is who he represents himself to be and is in possession of the credit card used;
• Once this checks out, the escrow company asks the seller to ship the merchandise;
• Merchandise is shipped, and seller submits tracking information;
• Once the shipping site shows the merchandise as delivered the escrow company double checks to ensure the buyer has the goods in hand;
• The buyer now has an agreed-upon amount of time to either accept the goods or return it to the seller;
• Once accepted by the buyer, the escrow company releases the funds to the seller, less any processing fees and commissions.

Straightforward enough. If, that is, you are dealing with a legitimate online escrow company.

Fighting the Fighter

But the world, as we know, likes to throw us curves; and in this instance in the curve comes in the guise of escrow fraud.

Handling, as it does, substantial amounts of money, the escrow company is often itself a target of fraud--where look-alike phishing sites try to con you into using them rather than the bona fide site; and the escrow company concept itself is also flagrantly abused by criminals who set up fraudulent escrow sites where money will only travel one-way: you guessed it, away from you.

In fact, the problem of fake on-line escrow sites is so substantial that some reputable and legitimate escrow sites have simply thrown in the towel.

Buyer Guardian, for example, recently shut its doors due to Internet fraud stealing their business, and posted the following note on their site: "We are sad to report that after careful and lengthy consideration we have made the decision to cease operations at BuyerGuardian.com. This is a very difficult decision, and one that is made primarily due to the rapid growth of online escrow fraud."

Many of these apparently bona fide escrow companies, established for the sole purpose of enriching the criminal, are set up off-shore--predominantly in Russia or China--where lax cyber crime laws (and sometimes questionable cooperation with U.S. Authorities) makes it more difficult to shut the sites down and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Enter: Escrow.com

Actually, Escrow.com entered this fray nearly ten years ago during the dot-com boom and has over the years shown itself to be the online escrow company to turn to for secure and fraud-less auction and other online sales/purchase transactions--with the credentials and staying power to prove it.

Licensed by the state of California--as well as by the States of Idaho and Arizona, who require separate licenses--Escrow.com is the only on-line escrow company credentialed to serve every state of the Union, and who indeed does so 24/7.

While Escrow.com will handle transactions of any size, it may not make financial sense to turn to them for low cost items since their transaction fee is $25, and their commission is $63 per $1,000 value of the transaction if payment is by credit card and $32.50 per $1,000 for wire transfers.

But, if you value your sleep, Escrow.com would be indispensible for any transaction of $250 on up.

Peace of Mind

Michigan-based telecomclassifiedads.com, which buys and sells expensive telecommunication switching equipment concurs, would not, according to Mickey Fivenson, complete any online transactions without Escrow.com.

"I use Escrow.com for all my equipment transactions, and without them I would not be in business. It's as simple as that.

"I deal with buyers and sellers on a daily basis who do not know each other and who live in different parts of the world. Escrow.com is the only way I can complete a transaction between them.

"As a result, after five years of doing business through Escrow.com I have never had anything but satisfied customers."

Dave Kurko of RPM Auto Wholesale in Pleasant Hill, CA could not agree more:

"Escrow.com provides a safety net for both seller and buyer, delivering certainty in an uncertain world.

"Most people understand the concept of escrow, particularly if they have bought and sold real estate in a jurisdiction that uses an escrow company rather than an attorney to settle a real estate transaction; in fact, we have modeled our transaction on the real estate transaction. Escrow.com has made this approach not only possible but also very effective.

"They are also very customer centric, and thanks to their tech support we have been able to integrate opening an escrow account with them into our own web-hosted application, allowing our CRM software to talk directly to their database over a secure link.

"Really, they're the only game in town. We've searched other companies, and nobody else measures up."

Escrow.com--The Detective

While Escrow.com is gaining increasing recognition as the Internet escrow company to turn to for peace of e-commerce mind, their staff, on a daily basis, also hunt and diligently work to shut down fraudulent impostors, which are encountered daily.

And they spring up like mushrooms, these impostors: there are days that Escrow.com staff discovers as many as ten new such sites.

A couple of clever fraud specimens can be found (if they are still up at time of print) at http://www.safe-wayonline.com and http://www.escrow-holdings.net, both of which have been confirmed as unlawful. You certainly cannot fault these criminals for lack of professional design.

The good news is that as these sites are tracked down, authorities are alerted and the sites are soon off the air.

eBay Weighs In

To quote the biggest auction site of them all, eBay:

Pay safely - beware of fake escrow services when you consider using them to pay for your eBay item.

For eBay transactions, you should use eBay's only approved Escrow Company: www.escrow.com

To avoid being deceived by fraudulent email from a fake escrow service, you should visit the escrow service's Web site to verify information you received via email.

Make sure you type the entire Web address (for example, www.escrow.com) into your Web browser. Don't let your Web browser auto-complete the Web address for you. It could mistakenly auto-complete a fraudulent Web address.

Learn more about escrow: http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/payment-escrow.html

Escrow.com--The Household Name

More importantly, however, as Escrow.com gains further and further recognition on its way to become a household name, it gets harder and harder for impostors to defraud the public for the excellent reason that they are not Escrow.com--the only name you know you can trust.

Here's to peace of mind and a good night's sleep.

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-based Ulf Wolf writes about the Digital Divide and Cyber Crime for Words & Images (ulf@words-images.com)

It is hard to conceive of a more liberating communication medium than the internet; and holding the promise, as it does, of fully engaged citizens--of a populace enjoying the give and take with both state and local government which makes for true participation--few things are as dismaying, and as threatening to that promise and vision, as the very real possibility of cyber crime ambush.

And he is very real indeed, the cyber criminal--the individual who for reasons best known to his darker side have chosen to use today's open information technology to commit serious crimes and harm others.

You've heard of his schemes: lottery scams, internet auction frauds, Nigerian advance fee fraud, phishing, identity theft, the list goes on and seems to grow almost daily as innovation is bent toward the quick and dishonest digital buck rather than creative contribution to others around him.

And to make matters worse, cyber crime seems to be "everywhere" now. But just how everywhere is it?

The IC3

The IC3 report for 2007 has recently been released and does shed some light on just that question.

IC3 Background

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3--http://www.ic3.gov), launched in May 2000 as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC). In December 2003, the IFCC was renamed the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) to better reflect the range of internet crime encountered.

Shortly thereafter IC3 established a partnership with the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to serve as the main federal vehicle to receive, develop, and refer to state and local authorities complaints regarding the rapidly expanding underbelly of the internet: cyber crime.

IC3 was intended to and continues to serve the broader law enforcement community, including federal, state and local agencies, which employ key participants in the growing number of Cyber Crime Task Forces.

Since its inception, IC3 has received complaints across a wide variety of cyber crime matters, including online fraud (in its many forms), intellectual property rights (IPR) matters, computer intrusions (hacking), economic espionage (theft of trade secrets), child pornography, international money laundering, identity theft, and a growing list of additional criminal matters.

IC3 provides victims of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that immediately alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and local level, IC3 provides a central referral mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes.

Cyber Crime Statistics

Caveat: The following statistics give a good overview of reported instances of cyber crime. It would, however, serve you very well to keep in mind that researchers (for once) agree that only one instance in seven is actually reported to the authorities, or to sites such as IC3. The true figures, then, are roughly seven times higher.

2007 Complaints

From January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007, 206,884 complaints were filed online with IC3. This is actually a 0.3% decrease compared to 2006 when 207,492 complaints were received.

Dollar Loss

The total dollar loss of $239.09 million to reported cyber crime was at an all-time high in 2007.

Contact Method

Leading the field by a very wide margin as the cyber criminal's favorite mode of contact is email (73.6%), followed at a distant second by the webpage (32.7%). It stands to reason that the anonymous nature of email and websites would be favored since they allow perpetrators to solicit a large number of victims with just a few keystrokes.

Other contact methods included telephone (18.0%), snail mail (10.1%), chat rooms (2.3%) and in-person (1.7%).

"With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

If Abraham Lincoln had said this on CNN today, it would have held as true as it did 150 odd years ago. The only difference being the channels that now influence and measure public sentiments.

Horse and buggy--along with town criers--then; television debates, and the Internet now. Same principles, different media.

Government 2.0 with its counterpart Digital Citizenry depends on the digital give and take between government and the citizen.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, known as NASA by most, is an interesting government agency in that they mostly get heavy media coverage when things go wrong.

As in, how many shuttle missions were covered before one of them went terribly wrong? Except, of course when things go extremely well: as in landing on lunar surfaces and such.

However, in-between these two extremes, the day-to-day smaller successes and lesser setbacks are rarely covered to any great extent by television or the press. Just not interesting enough, I guess.

Therefore, if Muhammad does not want to come to the mountain, it is time for the mountain to make a digital stab at coming to the citizen. And NASA is really doing that.

The experimental initiative at NASA is called CoLab, with the stated goal of acting as "advisor and consultant to groups within NASA, building direct and open collaborations between the public and NASA scientists and engineers...[and] use technology to facilitate public contributions to NASA activities."

John Bell of Ogilvy PR recently pointed out that great "emerging" brands like eBay, YouTube, and Netflix are "authentic, adaptive, relevant, transformative, fresh, immersive, and social." And now it seems like Peter Gray, the NASA CoLab Program Manager, must have has ripped a page out of eBay's playbook when he recently bandied about the much used--by these emerging brands, that is--buzzwords like "participate, collaborate, and innovate," when he talked about CoLab. Sounded like an emerging NASA brand, in fact; and Government 2.0.

NASA CoLab is trying some innovative things to reach out to the public. There is currently a co-working space in Silicon Valley open seven days a week. Eventually they hope to host co-working spaces in major U.S. cities that are "the NASA equivalent of an Apple Store" as Mr. Gray put it. That would be very hip indeed.

Additionally, the "Luna Philosophie" series, held at San Francisco's Yahoo! Brickhouse incubator (in coordination with the full moon, no less), is a series of open conversations on different topics broadcast using USTREAM.TV. CoLab has also participated in national conferences, and held Camp CoLab brainstorming sessions with NASA staff about how to change and adapt CoLab across the ten or so different NASA facilities around the country.

And more to the digital point, there is also an elaborate NASA presence on "CoLab Island" in Second Life, providing information about all sorts of activities with an additional emphasis on having "launch parties" and the like. However, despite this high quality (and perhaps necessary) presence, because Second Life has very few habitual users, it may not have the desired effect of reaching the multitudes.

It is a work in progress, no doubt, and it isn't yet an outstanding model of government "CoLab-oration" with its citizens. Nonetheless, seeing as this is the vision and product of an agile, lightly-funded staff, CoLab must be given a lot of credit for experimenting with new ideas, reaching out to the public, and doing more than most any other government agency in taking advantage of new media.

The U.S. presidential election is more or less just around the corner; and as we speak our two candidates are grappling with issues more pressing than the future of Digital Citizenry; nonetheless, that issue does remain on their books and in their campaign material, and have been addressed by both Obama and McCain.

So where do they stand?

It's no secret that Barack Obama has used the Internet more successfully than any other candidate in any election before him. By the end of the campaign he expects to raise as much as US$1 billion online, that's 12 times what John Kerry raised in 2004. Also, his online activities have mobilized over two million people to work for him, and he used the Internet to get more people up and running earlier and at a better clip than any of his opponents during the primaries.

As expected, Obama's IT savvy approach to political campaigning is reflected in his stated technology policy. If elected, he says, he will appoint the country's first true Chief Technology Officer, responsible not only for government technology infrastructure, policies and services, but also for technology policy across the country.

Obama's digital aim, which I find rather promising, is to create a "transparent and connected democracy" in these United States.

According to campaign material, his policy states: "Barack Obama will use the most current technological tools available to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and promote citizen participation in government decision-making."

The policy then goes on to promise that more data will be available to citizens on the Internet, that government meetings will be made viewable, and even "participatable" on the Internet, and that cabinet officials will hold national online town hall meetings.

Today, with voter-numbers declining and citizen political engagement weakening year by year (except during national financial emergencies, as today), Obama's technology policy should be viewed as a firm step to improve democracy by digitizing it. Bottom line: Obama, if elected, will be the U.S.'s first technology-savvy president.

John McCain's technology policy is, you may have guessed, not quite of the same caliber. While it does recognize the importance of making more information available to Americans on the Web, it never refers to the use of social networking tools as a means to expand democracy and participation in government.

It is easy to assume that this divergence in policy between McCain and Obama may be based on a generation gap--McCain is 71 and Obama is 47, after all-- but there are many citizen in McCain's age bracket that know how to use email, and plenty more besides, that in fact use their computers and the Internet in many creative ways.

While the age gap might serve as a plausible reason/excuse, I think the difference in approach boils down to political beliefs. Obama is pursuing an agenda that squarely aims at increasing citizen participation in government through the use of the internet, while McCain hasn't quite caught on to the importance of Digital Citizenry just yet.

Photo by Beth Can. Creative Commons Lic. Attribution 2.0 Generic