A Real Online Deception

 

Online deception is a kind of deception through a medium except face-to-face, the most frequent way to conduct an online deception maybe the email include information verify or URL, the fake message to tell you that you have win a prize. I always consider this kind of deception would only appear in the news and always delete these kinds of messages without reading, but it definitely happened to my roommate last week.

My roommate first received what we called phishing emails, an email used to get personal information. The email included a picture looked like a medical record and the content of the email was:” Here’s your father’s physical examination record, take care of yourself!” the cheater also created a pseudonyms as “Mom”. My roommate was so worries about her father that she didn’t check the email address but directly downloaded the attachment picture. Her password and account includes personal information was stolen in a second by the virus included in the attachment. The cheater used this account to have an online chat with my roommate’s parents, and finally asked her parents to transfer 70,000 dollars to the cheater’s bank account. My roommate realized the deception in the second day when her father called her and asked if she has receive the money. What the cheater did is an identity fraud in financial, he used my roommate’s identity information to engaged crime and obtained a large amount of money from her parents. Text based chatting online is less of nonverbal cues, the cheater pretended to be my roommate, who involved in some troubles in the school and need money immediately. He also said the cellphone was lost so he cannot make a phone call. My roommate’s parents failed to detect the deception because the less of voice and nonverbal cues. They also easily fall into a truth bias, for they simply believe what their “daughter” said because of the close relationship between them.

As we emphasize in class, college students are prime target for online deception. US students usually toss out piles of credit card offers, and their detailed personal information are all online. As for me, I seldom balance my checkbook and keep receipts from bank before I came to Penn State. What’s more, international students like us are more attractive to some criminal. Most of the students from China came from an upper middle class or upper class family, parents usually prepared a huge amount of money for us to finish our university study. We usually carry more than one credit or debit card in order to deal with some unknown emergency problems, that’s why Chinese students usually have more disposable money than other students. Since the limited between two different countries, the method students use to contact parents are based on the internet, like email, QQ (a synchronous chatting software) and video chat. These contain tons of the personal information even the bank information, which provide chances for identity thief to engage crime. 

After my roommate called police, we also realized how important for us to protect our personal information. It should be started by set up personal security, change the frequently-used password monthly and use different passphrase for different things. We also tried to think about complex password in words or sentence instead of simple date of birth. After receive an email or message, double check the address and the link included in the email before open it, and be cautious to download any attachment or software from unfamiliar website. We also let our parents know that they should never trust the request for money without confirmed by a video chat or phone call.