D5.2b: ID-related Crime: Towards a Common Ground for Interdisciplinary Research

Title: TECHNIQUES AND PRACTICES: THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Techniques and practices: the tools of the trade

In this section we focus on eBanking as a particularly striking example for eCommerce’s vulnerability to ID crime. We will take a closer look at several common techniques for ID crime (most of which are also in common use for other forms of eCommerce crime), along with a few real-life cases and the legal response to it. We will specifically examine the interesting cases of phishing (a more recent phenomenon whose popularity has soared in the last two years) and sniffing (a common activity for network traffic analysis that is unfortunately quite prone to abuse by ID criminals). The relatively common case of hacking will not be examined as it is not specifically tailored towards ID crime and therefore falls outside of the scope of this deliverable.

For the purposes of this section, we define eBanking as the use of telecommunication (specifically the Internet) for the purposes of managing bank accounts, investments, portfolio’s and such, including the electronic completion of transactions. Typical examples of eBanking services include banking websites and payment software. In the present context, we are of course mostly concerned with the use of eBanking tools by consumers, as this is where the greatest ID crime risk lies.