In 2015, I wrote "Cleaning up the 'Net." It was an action plan to reduce incidence of financial and other crime committed over the internet. One of the main principles of the book is that those that provide services to internet users - including domain name registrars and others - were enabling and profiting from crime.

Is 2021 the year when someone listens and starts to take seriously the ease with which criminals can, for example, register domain names that even the most basic know-your-customer would establish is more likely than not to be used for some improper purpose?

On the weekend when, at last, the USA gets laws to require at least some degree of declaration of the ownership of companies, is there an appetite to tackle this even bigger problem?

Hint: it's not...

We haven't seen this one for a while, or rather we've not seen it in this format.

The simplest and oldest 419 scam is back in time for Christmas.

And once more, Google is complicit. Look at the "reply to" address. How is not possible that they are not required to identify and block things such as this? Oh, yes. They say "we are google. We are big. You can bog off."

The news (Al Jazeera) that Zimbabwe's sortie into restoring its own currency is in crisis is extremely unwelcome.

Just as we saw in Russia in and about 1997 there is rampant inflation (now reaching 800%) and the local currency being eschewed in favour of US dollar bank notes.

Strict controls are now being imposed on so-called peer-to-peer payment systems.

The so-called 419 scam is not the only fraud that has a long history of coming out of Nigeria - and other countries. The old "we'll get your stuff past inspection" was a major money spinner but another, even more lucrative one, has just landed. We've not seen it for a very long time.