Phishing Scam Poster

Phishing scam is getting common within the society nowadays. Basically, phishing scam sends an email to attack someone with purporting to be from a valid financial or eCommerce provider. The email often uses fear tactics in an effort to entice the intended victim into visiting a fraudulent website. Then, the victim is instructed to login to their account and enter sensitive financial information such as their bank PIN number. The information is then sent to the attacker who will uses it to engage in identity fraud. It is really important for us to be aware of those genuine websites.

Here are the posters which i've created which regarding the phishing scam:

Potrait Version

Landscape Version

Cybercrime

Cybercrime is basically any act that would be against the law in the physical world that takes part on the internet. Based on Criminal Justice Cybercrime Categories (Professor David L. Carter – 1979), Cybercrime can happen as the computer are always the target, for example computer intrusion, data theft, technovandalism. Besides, computer is also another medium of of the Crime, such as Credit card fraud, telecommunications fraud, theft. Moreover, computer is also incidental to other Crimes, like drug trafficking, money laundering, child pornography.

Image taken from: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/cybercrime.jpg
In January, 2009, there were more than 4,000 cyber complaints, mostly concerning cyber crimes have been lodged with Cybersecurity Malaysia in the past two years. (reported by the star online). Chief executive officer Lieutenant-Colonel Husin Jazri said that the complaints, mostly consisted of hack threats, fraud, denial of services and other computer problems such files lost or corrupted by viruses.
In Malaysia, there is an enforcement agency --> Cybersecurity Malaysia,which cater the service of digital forensic, security assurance, security management and so on.analysing evidence and providing expert witnesses for relevant cases. In order for enforcement agencies to fulfill their roles, they require processes, role players, technical support and specialist centres to aid in analysing and solving technical problems to help the judicial process.

image taken from: http://www.cybersecurity.org.my/properties/images/services/011.gif
Colonel Husin even quoted that, if in the future they cannot cope anymore, we may need to have a cybercourt! It can be used to speed up the prosecution of cyber criminals, encouraging more specialized judges and lawyers. According to CYBERSECURITY MALAYSIA, a very challenging issue in cyber crime investigation is the gathering of evidence. If there is a cyber court, there will be a need for a provision on how the court can facilitate and give empowerment for evidence collection in a much, much easier way. The setting up of the court must take into consideration the bottleneck and how it can help ease evidence gathering.
It is due to the fact that the country's cyberpopulation is increasing, the number of online transactions or other activities will increase in tandem, which will likely mean more incidents of cybercrime. Advancement of broadband and wireless enable everyone of us to make full use of Internet. However, such medium can also be used as cybercrimes where the more criminals taking advantage over the situation, conducting crimes online. The situation will definitely get worst when the global economy is facing recession, as everyone wish to earn more money than others! And this is one of the "short-cut" for the criminals, without realising the consequences of it.

Power Abuse

image taken from :http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-4025743/stock-photo-malaysia-th-police-day.html

During 202nd of Police Day, there was a new slogan "Tegas, Adil dan Berhemah” (Firm, Fair and Courteous”) for it. According to newly appointed state deputy police chief Datuk Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman, he mentioned that "Integrity Is Our Practice" which would help to enhance the performance and authority of the force.

However, some negative perceptions have applied towards the police. For example, in 2008, there was a case of "Strong case against officer over alleged rape" from The Star. The cop raped a 17 years old girl in the station in Subang Jaya after he instructed the couple to go to police station after knowing that the guy does not pocess the liscence. During the investigation session, two of them were separated, and here was the time where the cop forced the girl to perform oral sex before she was rapped. After the case, the cop was suspended and faced disciplinary action. However, this incident has left a bad impression for the public towards the image of police. Public starts to wonder the so-called integrity characterisctic of police. If we could not even trust the police, who can we depend on? They are the entity that suppose to protect our public's safety!

image taken from : http://jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2007/10/daniel-e-bosley-hypocritical-big.html

On the other hand, according to SUARAM " Ongoing Abuse of Police Power Must End!", there was a latest news where the police misuse their power in the arrest of Hindraf leader, S Jayathas, on the grounds of wearing an anti-ISA badge when Hindraf had a prayer ceremony, 13 December 2009 to mark the Internal Security Act (ISA) detention of five Hindraf leaders two years ago.
The police did not inform S Jayathas of the grounds of arrest even after they were asked.Such action indeed lead the police committed the violation of Article 5(3) of the Federal Constitution which states that when "a person is arrested, he shall be informed as soon as may be of the ground of his arrest..."
Moreover, according to Article 10(1)(a) of the Federal Constitution states that every citizen has the right to freedom of expression. S Jayathas has the right to express his opinions under the protection of constitution and his arrest is a violation of his constitutional right.
Police should carry out the job effective and efficiently, however, in this situation, it seems to be opposite. If such situation continue to happen, i believe this will definitely lower the confidence of public towards the accountability of police. If none of us put faith in cops, this will threaten the safety of our country, as we all know that cooperation between public and cops are essential in the effort of reducing the crime rate. Without the help between one another, not only the safety innocence public will be affected, but also disrupt the development of our country!

It is the time for the Government to intervene in the matter, enforcing the Police Reform Act 2002. It is basically "An Act to make new provision about the supervision, administration, functions and conduct of police forces, police officers and other persons serving with, or carrying out functions in relation to, the police; to amend police powers and to provide for the exercise of police powers by persons who are not police officers; to amend the law relating to anti-social behaviour orders; to amend the law relating to sex offender orders; and for connected purposes". Besides, police must be more committed to perform their tasks/jobs, dispel negative perception in order to restore the public confidence towards the force.

Defamation

image taken from: http://www.virginiabusinesslitigationlawyer.com/defamation-libel-and-slander/

Defamation can be defined as express words that may lower another person's reputation in the public. In Malaysia, defamation law is protecting people's reputation from unfair attack. Acording to Defamation Act 1957, section(5), in an action for slander in respect of words calculated to disparage the plaintiff in any office, profession, calling, trade or business held or carried on by him at the time of the publication, it shall not be necessary to allege or prove special damage whether or not the words are spoken of the plaintiff in the way of his office,
profession, calling, trade or business. Hence, with the existance of Defamation Act, we are able to sue those who say/publish wrong or malicious comments. The defamation case can go to court, with a hearing before a judge. However, the majority of cases are settled. This included a published apology, sometimes a payment or sometimes none of it was applied.

Image taken from: http://www.topnews.in/files/Anwar-Ibrahim1.jpg

In November 2009, there was a case regarding Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who won a civil suit against publisher New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd and its former group editor-in-chief over a defamatory article published by its newspaper in 2002. Anwar had filed defamation suti agaist NSTP and its former group editor- in- chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad in 2003 where the article enttitled, " Anwar's link to US lobbyist" which published in 2002. The accuracy of articles was left in doubt as the editor only looked at various previous articles as her source and relied on the article in the New Republic magazine as she claimed that the magazine is a credible, reputable, magazine on political and social issues in the United States. Supposedly, the editor should obtain the response through other publication of article or even seek enquiries from Anwar's family. In the end, high court ordered two defendants to pay RM100,000 as compensatory damages to Anwar. From this case, we can know that it is important to seek the element of fairness when you are going to publish any articles or information about someone.

image taken from: http://the-malaysian.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

According to the Law of Defamation Act 1957, section (3), broadcast statement, stated that for the purpose of the law of libel and slander the broadcasting of words by means of radio communication shall be treated as publication in a permanent form. Hence, the information which published will be well-known by the public out there. If the source/information was not credible, it will surely defame a person's reputation and status within the society.

There was also another case where the famous blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin claimed that Dr Nordin, who is the vice chancellor of University Utara Malaysia, was a plagiarist on the Malaysia Today website and in the 98th edition of Suara Keadilan in November 2006. Such claim was not true which lead to High Court ordered Raja Petra Kamaruddin to pay RM7million to Dr Nordin for libel.

In conclusion, whenever we want to say something about someone, we must make sure that it is accountable and there was prove to be stated. One can defend onself by saying that what he/she said was true, however, you must prove it right! Else, if you are expressing your opinion/comments towards a particular subject/object, you must be sure that it's a fair comment which it is reasonably accurate.

It is an OFFENCE -- Plagiarism!

Image taken from : http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/jfm/plagiarism/plagiarism-jfm.htm

According to Gary Slapper from the Times Online, the word plagiarism comes from the Latin plagiarius — someone who abducts a child, a kidnapper. Today, a plagiarist can be seen as having snatched the work to which someone else has. Students commit plagiarism if they put into their work the academic ideas of someone else without acknowledgment — commonly by copying from another student, downloading material from the internet or paying for an essay to be written by an essay-writing firm.

There was a study by Duke University (reported in The Star, Oct 2, 2006) found the percentage of students confessing to cheating to be 56% for MBA, 54% for engineering, and 45% for law and about 85% of university students felt they needed to cheat to excel. As stated on Plagiarism.org: "Plagiarism is quickly becoming part of our educational culture".Some students are lazy in conducting the research, what they do is just surf the Internet, copy others works and paste it for the use of their assignments purposes.

For some people, they do not even realized that they have actually use the exact same sentence of others works until they were notified. This is so-called unintentional of plagiarism. One interesting question that you must ask yourself is "Would I know this if I hadn't read it on that website/in that book?" (cited from http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/school/plagiarism.html) So, if the answer is "NO". Remember to cite the source, acknowledge the author's work rather than risking yourself into trouble.

Image taken from :http://www.buzzle.com/articles/detecting-plagiarism-on-the-internet.html

There was a hot issue which arise recently,"UPM duo in plagiarism scandal" involving two academicians (a professor and one who recently received her PhD). She produced a reference book entitled, "Writing an Effective Resume" meant for management students on writing impactful resumes that would attract potential employers. However, this book was suspicious of having plagiarised materials have plagiarised materials of several American university websites, including Harvard and Albion College.

Higher Education Ministry director-general Prof Datuk Dr Radin Umar Radin Sohadi stated that plagiarism in higher education environment is certainly can not be accepted. Hence punitive action would be taken under the Universities and University Colleges Act and Statutory Bodies (Discipline and Surcharge) Act (Act 605). Investigations headed by UPM's Legal Department concluded that among the actions to be taken are that they repay royalties to the university, as well as a "severe reprimand on their personal file". One of the author who has just completed her PhD stated that since the source was from Internet, so she thought the source was for public domain and such she did not cite the source. Not citing the source, is the price that she has to pay, it may be unintentional but the printers suffer the biggest loss as the books could not be sold.

Actually, students should treat the writing as part of their enjoyment instead of copy others work. When you have put in effort in completing it, the pride of being honour is even higher, as hard work pays off! Simply copying and paste is easier task, even a kids without education can do so, just by few clicking. However, being an educated person, we must not attempt in doing so, as no one likes their work to be copied and claimed as theirs. If this situation happen, the person who commited in plagiarism will suffer from the effects all by him/herself. Not only reputation of ones will be degraded, even the level of education/certification will be doubtful for others.
Since the technology is evolving around, Internet might be the good source of getting information, which others might use it as a way to plagiarise others work. It also provides the essential tools for us to detect the plagiarism issues as well. According to eHow.com, there are ways for a professor to detect students work.

Step One: Submission

What he needs to do is just inputs the assignent into a plagiarism detector. These software programs perform detailed checks automatically. While there are many different systems available, all operate in the same general way.
Step Two: Search
Once an academic work has been fed into a plagiarism detector, the system goes to work.
Plagiarism detection programs use search algorithms. The algorithms scour the Internet for sources that are similar to the submitted work. It can search for the hundreds or thousands of sentences that make up a paper! Besides from Internet sources, the tools may even detect the sentences which may not be public on the web.
Step Three: Report

Finally, the plagiarism software will create a detail report, listing the textual similarities that have been found. Links of original content are also provided, so professors can view the original articles clearly. Then, the copy percentage is also calculated, ranking the chances of being plagiarized.

License and Permit

In Malaysia, direct selling industries has contribute over RM 5.5 billion worth of sales in 2008 and offers business opportunities to Malaysian public. However, it also appears as the top of the list of complaints at the National Consumer Com-plaints Centre. There were 2,339 complaints in 2008, a substantial increase of 21% as compared with the 1,933 complaints in 2007. Normally, the complaints are related to scratch-and-win scams, credit card payments, cooling-off period (time given to consumers to reconsider the purchase), lack of information and defective products offered.

Malaysian Direct Distributors Association (MDDA) president Datin Sylvia Koh pointed out that out of 100 complaints of cheating lodged with the Domestic Trade, 90 were found to be committed by unregistered companies. Consumers now are sceptical about direct selling companies.

As stated in The Malaysia Government's official portal, in order to carry out activities in the manufacturing industry, a business is required to obtain a premise license as well as business license. In addition, special licenses are also required for manufacturing of specific products depending on the type of materials used.

According to Local Government Act 1976, section 107(5) every person to whom a liscence has been granted shall exhibit his liscence all the time in some prominent place on the liscence premises and shall produce such lisccence if required to do so by any officer of the local authority authorized to demand the same. Besides, under section 107(6), any person who fail to exhibit such liscence under subsection (5) shall be guilty of an offence and shall on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding five hundred ringgit or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to both.

The Star newspaper reported that, on 3th of December 2009, there were four companies and four directors were fined RM203,700 by a magistrate’s court here on 28 counts of illegally conducting a direct-selling business. The companies are Waterdrops Holding Sdn Bhd, Waterdrops Sdn Bhd, Waterdrops Ventures Sdn Bhd and Waterdrops Corporation Sdn Bhd were fined RM52,500 for the seven charges they faced. They were pleaded guilty for selling Smart Kiosk products, water vending machines, and R.O. Water Machines via direct-selling.

In addition to the issue, MDDA (Malaysian Direct Distribution Association) will launch its homepage which will be officiated by Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob. This homepage enables consumers to check whether the products/services offered to them are registered or legal direct selling companies as the site will provide a full list of MDDA members for them to counter-check.

So, if anyone of you are interested in starting up a business, don't forget to apply the license before operating the business. This is not only a legal document giving official permission to do something, but also to determine the specific obligations of your new business. By knowing all the qualification, is one of the basic elements of expanding your business from scratch. Malaysia is currently ranked 12th in terms of sales in direct selling business worldwide. Hence, the potential of direct selling business is huge and this can prosper in future, with the requirement that each of the direct selling operators must obtain the permits in order to eliminate the unecessary court cases.

Law on PDP and Cybercrime Tutorial Exercise

a. Linda was stunned in front of her PC when she received an electronic mail, in a chain of senders and receivers, telling bad things about herself, her crazy shopping habits, her domestic problems and her involvement in superstitious activities with a bomoh (magician) allegedly for gaining her more wealthy and fortunes. She is now thinking to pursue legal actions for the unfavorable email against her. With reference to the above case, explain the meaning of online defamation, and discuss the legal remedies available for Linda.

Suggestion:

According to The Electronic Frontier Foundation, defamation is a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone's reputation, and published "with fault," meaning as a result of negligence or malice. Libel is a written defamation while slander is a spoken defamation. It is also a false statement, presented as fact either deliberately intended to harm your reputation or as the result of negligence. The elements that must be proved to establish defamation are included

1. a publication to one other than the person defamed;
2. a false statement of fact;
3. that is understood as
• a. being of and concerning the plaintiff; and
• b. tending to harm the reputation of plaintiff.
4. If the plaintiff is a public figure, he or she must also prove actual malice.

Linda can actually take the case to court, but she has to consult online reputation expert to help her as well. She is actually being protected under the law of defamation which concerned with protecting the reputation of individual, corporation or other legal person from the harm caused by the communication of untrue statements to a third party. All the claims from the email can consider as a publication of permanent form as, according to the Law of Defamation Act 1957, Section (3) For the purpose of the law of libel and slander the broadcasting of words by means of radio communication shall be treated as publication in a permanent form. As for the severance of defences, in Section (19), Whenever in any action of libel the plaintiff sues more than one defendant, whether jointly, severally, or in the alternative, each defendant may file a separate statement of his case and appear at the trial by separate counsel or if he thinks fit, apologize or pay money into court or make other amends, whatever may be the defences set up by his co-defendants, and the plaintiff may accept such apology, money, or other amends and settle or compromise the suit and discontinue the action as between himself and one or more defendants without reference to the other defendants: Provided always that the rights and interests of the other defendant or defendants shall not in any way be prejudiced thereby.



b. Tommy, a Multimedia student at MMU, was caught by University authority after it was found that he had cracked the University’s information system, defaced the front page of University’s official website and stolen a bulk of confidential data regarding students’ academic records. It was also discovered that he had attempted to break several lecturers's computer system but without avail. On the investigation he said that all his action was just for fun exploring the system weakness and without any criminal intention. In this case, advice the University regarding Tommy's liabilities arising from his actions with reference to the law of computer crimes in Malaysia.

Suggestion:
Tommy had cracked the University’s information system which can lead him to guilty as base on CCA Section 3(1): A person shall be guilty of an offence if (a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer; (b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorized; and (c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case. If Tommy is guilty under this section, he is liable to a maximum RM 50,000.00 fine or to 5 years imprisonment or to both.

Another wrongful act which Tommy defaced the front page the University’s official website and stolen a bulk of confidential data regarding students’ academic records can actually lead to punishable with a maximum RM 100,000.00 fine or to 7 years imprisonment or to both as according to CCA Section 5(1): A person shall be guilty of an offence if he does any act which he knows will cause unauthorized modification of the contents of any computer. If the act is done with further intention of causing injury, Tommy can be punished up to RM 150,000.00 fine or 10 years imprisonment or both.

Although Tommy said that all his action was just for fun exploring the system’s weaknesses and without any criminal intention. However, base on CCA Section(3), recreational hacking, unauthorized access to computer, computer system and computer network, computer cracking to explore loopholes in the system and system intrusion are the acts which prohibited in the provision as well.