Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Another first for RAK.

The little northern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah has come up with another doozy, according to Gulf News..

"RAK considers imposition of penalties on victims of fraud."

There's been a spate of fraud cases in the emirate involving black magic and promises of untold wealth. We're told that: "The authorities have been repeatedly urging the public to be careful and never to fall under the fraudulent influence of cheats whose main target is the money of their unsuspecting victims." The warnings having been ignored and: "Some victims blindly follow the claims and instructions of the frauds and they enable the cheats end up successful in their fraudulent strategies."

That's obviously seen as 'aiding & abetting' the criminals.

Now I've always believed that victims of fraud, of conmen, people who pay money up-front and complain when they're cheated, deserve what they get. Stupidity and greed get their just rewards, but I've never thought they constituted a criminal offence.

Read all about it here.

2 comments:

secretdubai said...

I think that people should be held liable for their infected computers. Assuming it is an old virus/Trojan which a Security Update would have fixed, then people whose computers are sending out millions of spams and worms albeit without their knowledge should be cut off by their ISP, fined and forced to undergo basic computer security training before they are allowed reconnection.

I actually think we are getting to the stage where internet connection should be seen as a privilege, and people should supply some kind of documentation as to their fitness to use it. For professionals, this would either be an actual qualification or (for the many of us that learnt on the job) it would be a letter on company stationery; for older or retired people it might be a basic ICDL course done in a few evening classes.

My own parents just got broadband and while they would regard themselves as cautious people, I shudder to think what they might let in due to ignorance/inexperience.

Seabee said...

sd my computer's been under attack for several days now, literally every few minutes Norton flags that it's stopped an intrusion from the same three viruses.