back to article Funding drought shuts e-victims support group

Lack of funding means that a UK-based charitable organisation that helps victims of electronic crime will be forced to close next month. E-Victims.Org, established three years ago, has offered advice to individuals and small businesses on online security problems ranging from being harassed on Facebook to dealing with the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    just curious...

    ... but how much money do they need to stay alive? Not that I've got some going spare, but if there just happened to be a passing philanthropist, the numbers might be useful.

  2. Graham Bartlett
    Badgers

    Eh?!

    "net users were left confused about who to turn to when dealing with e-crime, e-commerce and anti-social behaviour problems"

    Someone is sending you abusive and/or threatening emails. Call the police, and get a new email address.

    Someone's hacked your bank account or stolen your credit card details. Call the bank, and call the police.

    Someone's ripped you off on eBay by taking your money and not sending anything. Call Paypal, and call the police if that doesn't help.

    Someone's ripped you off on eBay by sending the wrong thing (or a fake). Call Paypal, and call Trading Standards and the Small Claims Court if that doesn't help.

    Someone's ripped you off on eBay and they're based abroad. Kiss goodbye to your money, bcos you were stupid to buy from some unknown bloke in China in the first place.

    Job done. Now we don't need this charity.

    Badgers because they've got enough brainpower to get themselves out of a hole, instead of whining at someone else to do it for them.

    1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Eh?!

      Er, I think it's about support, which you're not going to get from the police, most likely. A friend of mine had a serious online stalker for a good couple of years and it can be traumatising. Don't assume it's just oversensitive, underclever people 'whining' or not taking responsibility for their own actions who might need this.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Coffee/keyboard

      Police ineptitude is the cause

      I understand where you're going with this, but the charity is there to help and the confusion is caused by the inactivity and unwillingness (for resource reasons) of the police to put together a grass roots e-crime service.

      As a former police officer, I can guarantee you that abusive e-mails/texts, etc. or anything that fell under "harassment" or the digital communications act was just put in the Crime Reporting Information system (CRIS), and not investigated, unless it was related to an ongoing case, or was life threatening or unless you were the unlucky recipient of being a victim for the 3rd time within a calendar year.

      As for card fraud, this is not looked into at all unless the amounts start heading into 5 digits. County courts (what you refer to as small claims) are a good solution for most of the issues you describe but they aren't really "e-crime". They're more contraventions of distance selling regulations or the sale of goods act, which in effect, are remedied through the civil courts.

      Crimes such as phishing, identity theft, malware ransoming (real e-crime) and such are completely misunderstood by the police and expect a blank look if you ever go to report it, and if you do, all you'll get is a CRIS number for your trouble.

      The best way to describe the state of the UK police is with my favourite quote:

      "An 18th century police force, fighting 19th century crime, using 20th century methods, in the 21st century".

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    seeing sense

    When the people who got support from this charity start calling the loca police, the Govt. will realise - perhaps - it's more cost effective to fund the charity...

    1. nichomach
      Unhappy

      Regrettably...

      ...the big society doesn't appear quite big enough for that...

  4. Graham Bartlett

    @Sarah and ACs

    "or unless you were the unlucky recipient of being a victim for the 3rd time within a calendar year"

    Says it all really. As the other AC says, report each occurrence. If nothing else, the getting-on-their-nerves factor might induce them to do something just to get you off their backs.

    Card fraud might not be actively investigated, but all you need to know is that you report it to the police and to your bank (who will *always* ask for a police incident number), and you get your money back. Even if you're a victim of phishing or identity theft.

    Failing to send you *anything* when you give them money is simple theft. Police time.

    Malware ransoming is simple blackmail. A more advanced threat, sure, but legally no different. Get it treated as such. Maybe the coppers won't know anything about how it can happen, but they damn sure know how to deal with blackmail ransom demands and tracing where the money goes. And if the money's going to St Petersburg or Shanghai, then frankly you're probably SOL whether there's a charity helping you or not.

    Sending you the wrong thing is certainly civil court time, and that's exactly my point. The system's already there, so why think you'd do anything majorly different when you buy online compared to when you buy offline?

  5. James Woods

    who cares

    you guys probably just raised their server bills since im sure this article got them more traffic than they've seen in the last year.

    non-profits like this that aren't "registered" only hurt legitimate non-profits that do comply with all aspects of being a non-profit.

    it's pretty freaking hard for a non-profit to go out of business unless of course the business plan it had (if any) was garbage.

    e-buhbye.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who was funding them?

    Their website is rather opaque it doesn't say who was funding them?

    or how much the funding was!

    Couldn't they make an appeal?

    or ask bodies like the Bill Gates Foundation?

    I see they have just announce one aspect will be taken over by 'Network for Surviving Stalking' www.nss.org.uk maybe the rest can be saved.

    Fortunately I've not needed there help yet.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a non-story

    God forbid they should show some philanthropy themselves and offer the service at their own expense. Maybe rally some of their friends. Do some fund raising. Maybe get the BBC to provide some of the billons in taxpayers money as I'm sure the group will feature on the BBC news for free.

    I wonder if, however, this is a small group of people who have a nice little job at the tax payer's expense doling out advice a simple web site could provide free for the princely sum £25/year to cover hosting costs. The costs could probably be defrayed by asking the hosting company to do it for free in exchange for a little advertising. If there are only enquiries 500 per day there's not a lot of load.

    Seems there are lots of these schemes coming out of the woodwork since the change in administration.

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