ChiefOfficers.Net

Media release: Australian Consumer and Competition Commission 26 Nov 2020.

The ACCC has today instituted Federal Court proceedings against Telstra (ASX:TLS) for admitted unconscionable conduct in the sale of post-paid mobile products to Indigenous consumers.

When customers spend months working with a salesman who works hard to understand their business and to tailor products and services to their specific needs, companies often cancel that relationship in favour of transferring the customer to someone with none of that understanding of the company, the product fit and, of course, the individuals involved. The question is this: does this hangover from the 1980s have a place in the modern sales environment?

When we wrote, in early 2010, a satire suggesting that Bernie Ecclestone might improve F1's racing by adding sprinklers to tracks (here ) we didn't expect that a few weeks later he would actually say he thought it was a good idea (but he didn't mention that we'd already put it forward). But the idea gained new impetus with the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix which turned out to be almost a proof of concept - and in doing so produced a race that, visually, looked more like the crazy days of 1970s and 1980s racing before sticky tyres and near-unbreakable downforce turned the sport into an engineering arms race that is at least as important as the driver's skill.

The USA's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) are reporting the large-scale re-emergence of the Emotet trojan. Since July 2020, CISA has seen increased activity involving Emotet-associated indicators. During that time, CISAs EINSTEIN Intrusion Detection System, which protects federal, civilian executive branch networks, has detected roughly 16,000 alerts related to Emotet activity. CISA observed Emotet being executed in phases during possible targeted campaigns. Emotet used compromised Word documents (.doc) attached to phishing emails as initial insertion vectors. It spreads via links in e-mails and as macros in .doc files attached to e-mails.

Below is a notice from FinCEN, the USA's Financial Intelligence Unit. But there's a subliminal message. It's issued out of the FinCEN distribution system but it makes it very obvious that FinCEN is part of Treasury. And, as we know, you don't mess with Treasury, ergo you don't mess with FinCEN.

The actual subject is scary, too.

The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission has announced its 100th award under its whistleblower scheme. It's the 33rd this year.

The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission as done a deal with Power Solutions International Inc. of Chicago to "settle accounting fraud" allegations related to the company's overstatement of revenues by almost USD25 million.

It's not a criminal case so technically they are not "charges" which is how the SEC refers to them. And there's no judgment because the case didn't go to court. So the term "Order" is an administrative not a judicial document of record. Also, while the buzz is about "accounting fraud" the "fraud" was not the offence which the SEC proceeded with - that was filing misstated accounts.

Having cleared that up, the case is interesting: remember ENRON, anyone?

One of the most persistent forms of fraud, now well over 100 years old, is directory fraud. In a recent iteration, there is at least something a little different.

The USA is using Taiwan to bait China, as it did with Hong Kong, and China is responding.

Financial Crime Risk and Compliance Training (our sister division) has added five pages to its course "Essentials: lawyers and money laundering, etc." New court judgments in Australia are set to revise attitudes to notices compelling delivery of documents.

Australia has once more taken action against an overseas corporation in respect of the terms and conditions it imposes on purchasers in Australia.

Is Australia's approach to policing e-commerce workable in a global economy?

There was a millennium bug joke - an airline captain told his passengers that one of the aircraft's engines had cut out because of the millennium bug but it was OK because the other one was still working. Then his co-pilot told him that the clock on that one was a minute slow.

Of course, no airlines fell from the sky at midnight on 31 December 1999 and even the dozens of chips in some of the USA's nuclear missiles that were causing concern turned out to be just fine.

So, that's that then, you might think. But no.

Good grief. This arrived today. It's a straight copy, errors included but with the links redacted. And if there really is someone called "Blythe Masters," if I were you I'd sue your parents for giving you such a stupid name.

That's it. We've had enough. Until internet domain name registrars start to adopt responsible practices over who they sell domains to, especially the plethora of top level domains that criminals habitually use for the nefarious activities, it's time to block them entirely.