Originally posted here by Chickenpox2004
Personally I think the People who have lost money due to online Fraud is their fault. Due to the reason that everybody knows that the Internet is not safe and so they as Customers should take Security Meassures against it e.g. not surfing without a Firewall.
That's a pretty broad denunciation, Pox. How do you know that everyone knows that the internet is dangerous and hostile? My father-in-law certainly hasn't learned it with his Net-Zero dialup account. AOL has penned a deal to partner with RSA so they can give all their users SecurID tokens, but its not globally in place...how do all those users know?

I can appreciate the feelings of "it's their own damned fault!" from an embittered tech worker who is tired of handling the repetitive support calls...I know. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt to prove it.

But as security professionals (those of us that ARE in the industry), don't we have a certain obligation to help those less informed than we are? Or at least to minimize the harm they can encounter? Take a look at nihil's .sig sometime. It's very poignant, and appropriate.

Yes, to a certain extent it might be their own faults...but you can't expect a young child to know that electrical sockets are dangerous by instinct, can you? Of course, the first time they stick a finger (or GI Joe, or Barbie, or paperclip) into it, they'll probably learn a valuable lesson, hopefully without long lasting or disastorous consequences. But as a parent (or even as a decent human being) isn't it our responsibility to guide that child away from the socket when we see them contemplating it?

Wow, pretty deep there. (/me let's out a big John-Belushi-esque burp). That's better.