Editor's Blog: An everyday tale of e-crime

A little while ago a friend of mine got a mobile phone bill.

Nothing odd in that. Except that - while it had his address on it - it was in someone else's name. And it was for a phone number that wasn't his, on a network he had never used.

And then he got another. And another. All different numbers and networks, all for the same name. Not his.

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A bit of credit card statement checking later, it became clear that his identity had been stolen - or at least borrowed - by someone who had managed to buy three or four mobile phones on his plastic.

My friend contacted his credit card company - because these days you don't report this stuff to the police - which very quickly agreed to remove the charges from his bill.

And that was it.

The end.

Which means somebody had managed to score themselves a bunch of nice new mobile phones and get away with it because no one seemed particularly bothered about investigating. No one knew whether this was a one-off or part of a wider racket - and no one cared.

At the business end of things I've heard similar stories. For example, of the possibly apocryphal case of a company being targeted by phishing scammers who were trying to trick their way into the network. When the company called the police, an officer was sent down who thought he was dealing with thefts from their fish pond.

On the one hand you have individuals who feel there is no interest in their case - and on the other you have businesses with the same impression.

Identity fraud and cybercrime are of course difficult to investigate and because of the way they regularly cross international boundaries it's hard to get a conviction. But does that mean we should stop trying?

How can a fraudster feel threatened if there is no one you can report his crime to?

That's why silicon.com's latest campaign is important. What it is calling for is a dedicated cyber-crime police unit to lead investigation in this area. And already some pretty heavyweight individuals and groups have thrown their backing behind the campaign. You can find out more here.

We want to hear your thoughts and experiences of cybercrime. Were you happy with the way your problem was dealt with? Is e-crime given the right level of resources? Let us know what you think.

Editor's choice - three things you must check out on silicon.com this week:

Windows Server 2008 - find out what the silicon.com CIO Jury think.

It's the latest thing in mobile - Google Android, so find out more in our cheat sheet.

And check out the first of our behind-the-scenes videos from Heathrow's high-tech Terminal 5.