Cyber-crime doesn’t always pay, and cyber-policing is becoming a way to catch the criminals. Several recent news stories highlight how the online world has become a new frontier in crime and law enforcement.

I didn’t click on the link straight away. It smelled a bit fishy. It had come in a text message which said a delivery agent tried to deliver a parcel – specifically parcel NZ2446612-19.

I recently got privacy advice from a blackmailer. The email said he or she had studied my love life and created a video series about me. The first part apparently showed the X-rated video that I watched and the second part, taken with my webcam, showed me doing “inappropriate things”.

OPC has teamed up with South Auckland community initiative UpSouth for this year’s Privacy Week (13-17 May).

CERT NZ recently released their quarterly report for October to December 2017.

NetHui, the website says, brings together everybody and anybody that wants to talk about the internet. It's not a conference and speakers don't talk at you all day. Instead, Internet NZ’s gathering of technologists, humanitarians, educationalists and philosophers is designed “for the community, by the community”.

When Ross Compton’s house caught fire in September 2016, he was able to escape unscathed, with a suitcase full of clothes and the charger for his external heart pump. But when the 59-year-old US man explained to arson investigators how he’d broken the window with his cane and hurled his most important belongings out the window before scrambling to safety, they weren’t convinced. And so, in a twist that would have been science fictional a few years ago, they interrogated his heart.  

A recent data breach involved a deliberate email phishing* attack on an industry organisation. The email purported to come from the chief executive and requested a copy of the membership list (names and email addresses).