Why Do We Need These People?

I wasn’t planning a follow-up to the post about the charity group spending less than 3% of its intake on its purported mission, since there really isn’t much more to say about them. But then a massive earthquake hit Japan, causing hundreds of thousands of injuries, thousands (or more) of deaths, and almost unimaginable destruction – and less than 48 hours later there were already spam and phishing attacks being reported that had “Japanese earthquake” or “Tsunami” in the headers. It’s things like these that make me want to round up Internet scammers and have them all recycled as compost (which could then be used to grow food crops and feed the people left hungry by the disaster), but as bad as those are, the fake charities set up to try to scam money out of people trying to help the survivors are even worse…

You can pick up one of the stories on the Computer Weekly website if you’d like, and I’ll try and put up the WSJ link later today, but apparently the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is already warning about online charity scams sending emails begging for “donations” and posting appeals on various social networking sites and Internet communities around the world. The FTC is urging people to check out a charity group’s credentials, read their operating reports and tax returns, and look them up on reference sites like Charity Navigator before giving any significant amount of money. Personally, I can’t decide which is worse: the fact that most people won’t check on those credentials, the fact that all of those donations won’t reach the victims who really need help because some scammers is going to be spending it on hookers and blow, or the fact that such people will feel no remorse whatsoever and will continue to prey on the foolish, the unsophisticated, and the overly emotional in exactly the same way as soon as the next natural disaster comes along…

The fact is, complaining about this sort of Internet scam and then not doing anything to prevent it from succeeding is a lot like complaining about auto theft and then leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition every night. While it’s certainly true that Internet crime can never be eradicated, and even eliminating false charities online is impossible, there’s still a difference between being a crime victim and being a sucker. Giving money to some charity group that didn’t exist on Sunday and has no credentials whatsoever isn’t any different from attempting to buy products for 95% off on some website that no one ever heard of – or trying to buy a $25,000 Rolex for $20 from some guy you met in an alley somewhere. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is – and with all of the information available in a minute’s search online, the only people who are going to be taken by such scams are the ones who couldn’t be bothered to look. Or were too credulous, naïve or stupid to realize that they might need to do so…

Until everyone starts doing business responsibly online – or at least as responsibly as you would be while shopping for dinner in the real world – I will continue to bring you stories like this one. But I don’t expect to be stopping any time soon…