British Vision Issue 71, 网络犯罪愈演愈烈

Now with banks losing more than 30 million pounds to online crime last year, consumers are being warned today that they must start taking responsibility for their own security or possibly lose out. It comes as a report claims there is a new victim of cyber crime in the UK every ten seconds with more than 3 million offences committed last year. The vast majority involve cases online harassment¹, including threatening e-mails and blackmail². Our technology correspondent Benjamin Cohen is with me now.

Host: So what does this report tell us about the scale of cyber crime?

C: It looks like it's actually much larger than we initially³ thought, about 90% of online cyber crimes don't actually get reported to the police, and these are statistics being gathered from other sources, let's have a look at some of them. We can see that there is almost 2 million cases of online abuse, now includes things like psychological harm, and bullying⁴ on children sites like bebo, on the youth site facebook, racism⁵ and homophobia. There's also a huge amount of online sexual offences: 850,000. They include child-abusing glooming, in addition to unwarranted sexual approaches via work/ e-mail, but a really interesting point there is that online financial fraud has around 207,000 instances of that each year. And they include so-called phishing attacks, and that's when you got an e-mail supposedly from your bank asking you to log in and give your security details. The money from your account is then emptyed to an account of another victim. And then transferred out of the UK, and that's actually very difficult for the banks to be able to trace and difficult for them to recover.

H: And that's where this rather alarming warning comes in, today the banks may not continue to keep paying out in these instances.

C: It's important to stress that the moment banks do pay out in most cases, but they have been saying to me that that's when the terms of conditions are kept, and that's when people are acting⁶ responsibly. And it cost them 33 million pounds last year. That was a rise of 23 million pounds than the previous year. But paying out when it's not their fault, isn't that financially viable⁷ for the banks and they're starting to say the consumers need to take responsibility for their own actions online.

If you repeatedly fall victim to a phishing scam, when the bank has clearly after the first attack has explained to you what need to do to prevent yourself becoming a victim subsequently, of course you might expect them to turn around and question whether they should be paying out.

C: And the bank, and the banking⁸ industry is reviewing their, their codes in relation to online bank. And there can be a new code of conduct out in March of 2008. And if you wanna get any, viewers wanna get any tips, then view Channel4.com/news, um we put some tips of how to avoid being scammed in the future.

H: OK, thanks.

1 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

2 blackmail   

n.讹诈，敲诈，勒索，胁迫，恫吓

参考例句：

• She demanded ＄1000 blackmail from him.她向他敲诈了1000美元。
• The journalist used blackmail to make the lawyer give him the documents.记者讹诈那名律师交给他文件。

3 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

4 bullying   

v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈

参考例句：

• Many cases of bullying go unreported . 很多恐吓案件都没有人告发。
• All cases of bullying will be severely dealt with. 所有以大欺小的情况都将受到严肃处理。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。

6 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

7 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

8 banking   

n.银行业，银行学，金融业

参考例句：

• John is launching his son on a career in banking.约翰打算让儿子在银行界谋一个新职位。
• He possesses an extensive knowledge of banking.他具有广博的银行业务知识。