E-mail fraud could become a serious problem as the information superhighway evolves into a major system of electronic commerce, with million-dollar contracts being negotiated and transacted through electronic mail.
Predictor: Denning, Dorothy
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Dorothy Denning writes about a growing Internet marketplace and the risk of emerging computer criminals: ”On many systems, it is easy to send an e-mail message that appears to come from someone other than the actual sender … E-mail forgery is quite common … E-mail fraud could become a serious problem as the information superhighway evolves into a major system of electronic commerce, with million-dollar contracts being negotiated and transacted through electronic mail. On the Internet, it is possible to send or post an anonymous message by directing the message through an anonymous re-mailer that strips off the message headers, thereby hiding the true origin. While sending anonymous messages is not a crime and indeed has many benefits for privacy, it can be used in the furtherance of other crimes, for example, defamation and child pornography. Anonymous re-mailers have been used to send death threats to the President.”
Biography:Dorothy Denning was a professor and chair of Computer Science at Georgetown University in the 1990s, by which time she had been in the field of computer security and cryptography for two decades. Previous to her arrival at GU, she worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, SRI International and Purdue University. Her books include “Cryptography and Data Security” and “Information Warfare and Security.” She authored many Internet research studies. She was the first president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: December 13, 1994
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: E-mail
Name of publication: Journal of Criminal Justice Education
Title, headline, chapter name: Crime and Crypto on the Information Superhighway
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~dennning/crypto/Crime-and-Crypto.txt
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney