Time to purge the internet of cybercrime — by charging for email
Apr 3, 2017, 6:43 AM | Updated: 8:41 am
How bad is cybercrime?
“Cybercrime is out of control!”
That’s Caleb Barlow, who runs Threat Intelligence for IBM. Their latest survey says there were four billion computer records stolen in 2016 — more than five times the year before.
RELATED: Your political discussions could be hijacked by the Russians
And this isn’t Russia looking for emails. It’s criminal gangs going after your online bank account. And they buy their malware assault weapons on a website that looks a lot like an Amazon product page.
“This is an actual screenshot of a vendor selling malware. They’ve had 400 positive reviews in the last year and only two negative reviews in the last month,” Barlow said.
Yeah! They publish malware reviews and ratings!
“You can even buy attacks that come with a money-back guarantee if you’re not successful,” Barlow said.
So, at a time when the government can pretty much tap your dental work, hackers are merrily marketing malware to criminals who use it to spam their way your bank account. And we can’t identify them!
Forcing me to ask yet again: WHY IS EMAIL FREE?
Email should require a 49-cent E-stamp, so the Post Office can pay to set up an email fraud department, staffed by the smartest, meanest cyber-avengers they can find. Yes, we’d have to pay a few bucks a day – but the real impact would be on the spammer who sends out a couple million emails each day, because to send them, he’s gonna have to pay about a million bucks – which will go toward throwing his sorry a** into Gitmo.
Pardon my bleep.
-
Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
