1. Introduction

Fraud means trying to trick someone in order to gain an advantage. For your GCSE course, we are primarily concerned with fraud which takes place using ICT.

Fraud has been around probably as long as man has, it is not something that has only recently arrived with the Internet.

Before the boom of e-commerce and online banking, scams took place by mail or the telephone.

There were things called 'pyramid schemes' where letters would offer the possibility of earning vast sums of cash.

There were fraudsters who would telephone someone pretending to be their bank. They would tell the unwitting customer that there was a problem with the account and they just needed to confirm their account number or some other detail in order for the problem to be sorted out.

The advent of the Internet has just made it possible to contact millions of people very easily.

The next few pages will look at different types of fraud that have been made possible by the use of IT technology. Navigate by using the links on the left.