1/10/11
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY – It’s called war driving, tapping into an unsecured wireless internet connection in order to surf the web.
It’s also provided an opportunity for criminals to cash in on unsuspecting internet users.
The suspect in this most recent case is accused of stealing more than $150,000 from individual bank accounts during most of 2010.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s department says a nearly nine month long investigation revealed the 26 year old Nigerian suspect would drive through neighborhoods in Santa Barbara and Goleta looking for unsecured wireless internet connections.
“He was driving around with a device that if you were on an unsecured internet page it would show on his equipment and he would just store it”, says Tony Durham, crime prevention specialist with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Dept.
The Sheriff’s Department says the suspect would access personal information and online bank accounts with stolen passwords and then set up fraudulent bank accounts to transfer large sums of money online from home equity accounts.
Several people have so far been identified as victims of the suspect who is in County Hail on $1 million bail.
Durham says many people still don’t realize how important it is to have security when surfing the wireless web.
“Especially the elderly people”, Durham says, “they don’t understand that even though you are in your home, on your computer, unless you have it secured with a password, it’s accessible.”
Law enforcement says technology has made it easy for identity thieves to troll through neighborhoods looking for unsecured wireless web connections.
“It’s kind of hard to catch up to everything because everything is constantly changing”, says regular internet user Cathy Cardinal.
“Within the next few years everything is going to be vulnerable again”, adds internet user Joshua Apple, “technology doubles every two years and there’s new techniques to access that information.”
The Santa Barbara County sheriff’s department says the case remains an open investigation and the agency is urging anyone who has noticed large sums of money withdrawn from home equity accounts to contact them at (805)681-4150 as soon as possible.
Article source: http://www.kcoy.com/Global/story.asp?S=13819395
Category: Laptop Security