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By silicon.com, 16 August 2004 18:15

The police have regularly been lambasted - not least of all on the pages of silicon.com - for a slightly backwards attitude and awareness where technology is concerned and not least of all when it comes to catching criminals who are exploiting technologies such as email and the internet to commit their crimes.

Part of this isn't aided by the fact the online world changes every second while the offline world of red-tape-riddled bureaucracy, law making and legislation moves at an almost sedentary pace.

There's also the other issue of the under-resourced police having far more important things to do, such as catch murderers. However, this is exaggerated by the fact few have made the link between cybercrime and the fact it often funds far more serious offline crimes, such as the trafficking of drugs and humans, and the layers of violence that surround such operations.

Last week one policeman woke up to a particularly pernicious online crime when he reported himself a target of a particularly sophisticated email scam - or 'phishing' to you and us... and anybody else who is at all web-savvy.

Detective Inspector Paul Ginger clearly thought he was special and was targeted specifically when he told the BBC: "I was amazed to receive one of these messages on my work email. You have to admire their cheek but it just goes to show that no one is safe."

Firstly there is the ignorance of the approach taken by spammers, and the methods they employ to get email addresses.

In all likelihood there were probably as many as a million recipients on this "cheeky" email. silicon.com has covered almost every scam going, but still receives them daily. These people are trying to pick their moments or targets - they are merely sending them out indiscriminately to millions of email addresses each day.

One industry expert told silicon.com that Ginger "shouldn't flatter himself" by assuming the scammers targeted him in particular, adding that the whole thing suggests a worrying level of knowledge about cybercrime at a local law enforcement level.

Secondly it is worrying that the police actually have to receive such an email into their own personal inbox before they come out and start publicising the threat. It doesn't bode well for the future of law-making if the police first have to be targeted personally. And this isn't about specific units to handle specific crimes.

If somebody is targeted by a cybercriminal and chooses to go into their local police station to report it there should at least be enough knowledge of such things to pass them onto the correct people - sadly it would seem an uninformed shrug may still be just as likely.