al costs. John Cusey, a spokesman for Rep. Gary Miller, stated, “We have quite a bit of momentum going here.” On the downside spammers also have momentum going for them. With a few keystrokes, a spammer can send hundreds of thousands e-mails. Although the vast majority of the population can see through the hoaxes, and reject the messages the true goal of the scam artist is to get into bank account information. The end result is that they can walk away with 100 checking accounts for a few seconds work. Even though experts expect for this trend to keep growing government and law enforcement agencies are not ignoring the problem. Many groups such as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center and private organizations such as Junkbusters and ChooseYourMail.com are fighting back against the spam mail and the scams that are hidden in them. In 1996 the NCL (National Consumers League) started a program called Internet Fraud Watch, this program allowed consumers to either call an 800 number or visit their web site which is www.fraud.org, to report or gain advice on internet fraud. A few years later in 1998 they released the top ten Internet frauds to the IFW. The top ten is as follows: 1. Online auction transactions, 2. General Merchandise Sales, 3. Computer hardware/software sales, 4. Internet related services, 5. Work-at-home plans, 6. Business opportunities/franchises, 7. Multilevel marketing/pyramids, 8. Credit card offers, 9. Advance fee loans, 10. Job listings/employment offers. According to the Report from the National Consumers League to the U.S. Department of Justice, this top ten is very similar to that found in telemarketing and that most of the complaints involve non-receipt of the promised products or services. Also in the report they provide a plan to resolve the problem of Internet fraud, it involves three steps education, enforcement and industry policy. The first step, which is education, has seen t...
