Experts Call for Stringent Laws Against Cyber Crime in Philippines

According to the Internet security experts, cyber crime in the Philippines is getting more-and-more sophisticated. This claim gets clearer with an analysis of two recent examples.

In the first example, cyber criminals victimized Antonio Oposa, winner of Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2009, during the 1st week of December 2009. They took control of Oposa's Yahoo e-mail account.

On December 7, 2009, an e-mail from Oposa's account reached his friends stating that thieves had robbed Oposa at a Wales hotel and he urgently needed £1,730 to clear his hotel dues. The e-mail also stated that the money would be returned immediately once Oposa got back home.

But when the fraudulent e-mail came to Oposa's knowledge, he sent out another e-mail requesting everyone to ignore the fake e-mail. Oposa wrote regretfully that the hacking incident resulted in the loss of all his friends' IDs and he was currently trying to construct his new directory, as reported by ABS-CBN NEWS on December 25, 2009.

After sometime, a similar event occurred with Perfecto Yasay, Former Chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission. Yasay is also the candidate of the Vice Presidential Post from the Bangon Pilipinas Party.

The security researchers states that these kinds of e-mail attacks occur more commonly across the Philippines since there aren't any cyber crime laws in the country to catch and prosecute Internet criminals, particularly e-mail fraudsters. However, the Commission on Information and Communications Technology is trying to get an Anti-Cyber-crime Bill passed in line with the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime.

Moreover, it is hoped that this bill would be passed before the 2010 presidential election, as some very high-profile socialites in the Philippines have become victims of the scammers. The security experts state that there is no other option for the government than to make the Anti-Cybercrime Bill, a law to stop malicious e-mails from gaining ground across the country.

The experts' claim gets more firm with the security company McAfee recently claiming in its "Mapping the Mal Web" report that one domain out of every four in the Philippines is contaminated.

Related article: Experts Find Two Vulnerabilities in Firefox

» SPAMfighter News - 1/4/2010