and pieces of meteorites. Sometimes the con artists use established auction sites to run their cons. Often, though, they set up their own auction sites and advertise expensive items like Cartier watches and personal computers that a lot of consumers would be interested in. They ask victims to send money for the goods and then deliver nothing, or a counterfeit version of what they wanted. And it may be months before consumers realize what they got was counterfeit. Once enough money comes in, the sites vanish.
One of the most common auction scams is when a con artist maintains he bought a nonrefundable but transferable airplane ticket. Unfortunately, something came up and he no longer can use it. It's always for a popular destination and a time of year when plenty of people would be interested. He's willing to sacrifice it at a loss; he just doesn't want to have to eat the entire amount. The winner gets rewarded with a counterfeit ticket or nothing at all. Frequent flier mileage also turns up a lot on auction sites. The con artist claims his miles are good for a ticket anywhere in the world. The bidder sends the money and gets a letter saying, "Unfortunately, I just learned that I can't transfer the miles. Don't worry, I'll send you a refund." People have been waiting years for their refunds.
Every Christmas sees a predictable surge in auction fraud. There's always a hot toy that every child must have, but there's insufficient supply. So, con artists advertise on auction sites that they've got the toy. The Sony Playstation2 was the toy of Christmas 2000. Many people ordered them from phony auction sites and got nothing but an encounter with fraud. The address for the business that operated one site offering Playstations was a derelict house in Canada. The toll-free number consumers were invited to call was in California. The fax number to which they were told to send copies of their credit calls to speed their order was in the state of Washington. The money the company collected was wired to a bank in Florida. Does that sound like any business you want to deal with?
If you're going to buy merchandise from online auctions, and many people swear by them, research the seller carefully. Look for the person on other websites. Some auctions allow members to furnish feedback on their experiences with different sellers. Even the feedback option is susceptible to fraud, however, as unsavory sellers will post glowing reports on themselves. Some auction sites like eBay provide limited insurance. Probably the best type of auction to get involved in is one that offers an escrow service, where you pay a small fee and the money is held until your goods have been received.
THE MYTH OF SECURITY
Just about any type of scam gets a boost from the Internet, but the web has really opened up a new world of opportunity for credit card thieves. As I so rudely found out, whenever you use your card to buy something online, you're putting your account at risk. Crooks just love to log on to steal your card number.
One of their primary hacking tactics is "sniffing." When you type something on the Internet, it doesn't go straight to the website you're visiting. Rather, the data gets divided up into what are known as packets. These packets get routed from computer to computer, until they all coalesce at the intended web destination. Criminals will plant "sniffers" on website computers, most commonly those hosting shopping sites, and the sniffers intercept the packets, copy down the information, and then allow the packets to proceed to the website. Packets destined for shopping sites naturally contain loads of credit card numbers, and they're the sweetest smell of all.
This data then gets relayed to the computer of the criminals, where they sort it out and use it for ill-gotten gains. The whole process is essentially the Internet version of wiretapping.
But the chief way credit cards are stolen with computers is by breaking into the storage computers of sizable e-commerce companies and copying the extensive inventory of credit card numbers housed in their data bases. In late 1999, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, a rather brazen intruder helped himself to an early present when he broke into the computers of CD Universe, an online music store, and swiped more than three hundred thousand customer credit card numbers on file. Identifying himself as Maxim - he told the reporters he communicated with that