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Networking sites turn new face of phishing

Fraudsters Use Social Networking Sites As A Tool To Steal Sensitive Information From Professionals

ROHIT Dubey is an investment banker, who has just joined Facebook. One of the hundred people on his friends-list sends him an invite to a corporate golf tournament to be held this weekend. Rohit is excited at the prospect of playing golf over the weekend and networking with more i-bankers; he immediately accepts the link.
He goes on to fill the registration form, which asks him for his email address, credit card details for a payment and even to make a password of his own. Not suspecting any foul-play, our man goes on to fill in all the details and even inputs the same password as his email account, so that he doesn’t forget it next time he needs it. Little does he know that these details are going straight to a fraudster who’s been tracking his activity on Facebook and LinkedIn for a while now.
Gone are the days when phishing was restricted to emails supposedly from your bank. Fraudsters are increasingly turning their attention to social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and trying to use it as a tool to steal sensitive information from professionals like investment bankers and other corporates. With the growing popularity of such sites among older and high net-worth professionals, online security firms warn that these sites are proving to be soft targets for sophisticated phishing attacks.
People are generally off-guard when dealing with social networking sites, and tend to accept friend-requests pretty easily. According to Captain Raghu Raman, chief executive officer, Mahindra Special Services Group, a sophisticated fraudster who has identified his victim will try and get into his friends-list by either posing as an acquaintance, or a random ‘admirer’. Another trend that’s catching up amongst fraudsters is hacking into people’s Facebook or LinkedIn accounts and using it to gain access to people on the victim’s friend-list.
Having gained access to the friend-list, our fraudster sends the victim a link for a seemingly harmless event, like a corporate golf tournament. The link could potentially install a Trojan onto the victim’s computer which would continuously transmit sensitive information like usernames and passwords.
Alternatively, the link could open into a registration page for the event where the person is asked to input his email address and make a password.
According to Mr Raman, “most people use the same passwords for all their accounts so they don’t need to remember multiple passwords.” This will automatically put his or her email accounts at risk. “Participation in social networking sites is increasing at an alarming rate. Though we haven’t received any related complaints from the enterprises we deal with so far, it is a potential route that hackers are now taking,” says Amuleek Bijral, country manager, RSA securities.
Access to an investment banker’s email would open up a plethora of opportunities for fraudsters. The fraudster hacks into an email account or trading account and instead of directly stealing money, looks out for insider information or trades that are being carried out. He then carries out similar trades on his own account or uses the insider information to buy or sell stocks accordingly. This process is being termed as ‘slip streaming’- similar to what happens when a boat takes advantage of the low pressure created just behind a fast moving boat.
Though almost all investment banks and financial institutions have barred access to social networking sites from through their official firewalls, there’s nothing stopping their employees from using these networking sites from home or anywhere else. Corporate espionage is becoming a big revenue generator for hackers as well. According to Mr Raman, “hackers try and dig out information on bid-sizes for large-value deals and sell it to a counter-bidder at a huge sum.” While internet security providers are constantly developing antivirus and spyware systems to stay ahead of the fraudsters, they stress that the most effective way to combat phishing and data theft is education of the potential customers. It’s not just over the internet that phishing takes place; fraudsters are also using telephones to extract sensitive credit card information from people.
According to Mr Raman, the fraudster calls up a potential target and offers him an upgrade on his existing credit card, with fictitious benefits like extended payment dates and lower rates of interest. Once the fraudster has caught the victim’s fancy, he proceeds to extract the credit card number, and all other relevant details. The unsuspecting victim parts with the details hoping to get a better deal on his card by next month, but what he’s going to be left with is a big hole in his card.

Know abt Warren Buffet

Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is regarded as one of the world's greatest stock market investors, and is the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. With an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world as of March 5, 2008.

Often called the "Oracle of Omaha," Buffett is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. His 2006 annual salary was about $100,000, which is on the low side of senior executive remuneration in other comparable companies, and when he spent $9.7 million of Berkshire's funds on a business jet in 1989, he jokingly named it "The Indefensible" because of his past criticisms of such purchases by other CEOs. He lives in the same house in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500, today valued at around $700,000.

Buffett is also a noted philanthropist. In 2006, he announced a plan to give away his fortune to charity, with 83% of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2007, Buffett was listed among Time's 100 Most Influential People in The World. He also serves as a member of the board of trustees at Grinnell College.

Early life and Benjamin Graham

Warren Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska in August of 1930. The son of a local stock broker, one could say that investing was in a young Warren’s blood from the start. At a young age, Warren Buffett was not only intrigued by numbers, he had the capability to perform complex equations. At eleven, he would mark the board at his father’s firm, and would absorb as many of his father’s investing books as possible. As he got older, Buffett was fortunate to have quite a few successful entrepreneurial ventures, making him hungry to go straight into business rather than go to college. His father, however, overruled him on this. Of Buffett’s mentors, arguably the most influential was Benjamin Graham. Had his father not forced him to go to the University of Nebraska, young Buffett might not have picked up Graham’s book, The Intelligent Investor, which would serve as the final catalyst pushing Buffett into his career as an investor. Graham’s philosophy had such an impact on Buffett that he enrolled in Columbia’s graduate school to study directly under him. In Buffett’s own words: “I’m 15 percent Fischer and 85 percent Benjamin Graham.” (Hagstrom, 27) Mentor, teacher, and former employer of Warren Buffett, Graham began consolidating his own investing philosophy with the first of two of his most famous books, Security Analysis (1939), which is considered the “classic treatise” for conservative investing. In the book, Graham’s main thesis is that a diversified stock portfolio put together through logical research and the gathering of the facts (at a decent price), was a sound investment. As Buffett would say about Graham’s teachings:

“The basic ideas of investing are to look at stocks as business, use market fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety. That’s what Ben Graham taught us. A hundred years from now they will still be the cornerstones of investing.” (Hagstrom, 14) Graham needed to come up with a definition for investing because, at the time he was writing, there was an absence of a universally accepted definition to separate investing from, say, speculation. Graham’s definition is this: “An investment operation is one which upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal, and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.” Anyone who reads Graham’s definition for the first time will have questions such as what is thorough analysis, a safety of principal, and a satisfactory return? First, let’s start with the definition of thorough analysis, according to Graham: Simply, thorough analysis by an investor is the meticulous study of the facts available at hand, with the hopes of coming to an investment decision with reasoning, and logic from the gathered facts. But what about the other characteristics of a true investment, safety of principal, and a satisfactory return? Like anything in life, Graham points out that safety is never a 100% guarantee, and since that is indeed the case in business as well, he recommends an investor to seek out safety in so-called “grey zone” areas versus clear-cut, black & white options. The other essential characteristic, a satisfactory return, is made up of both income and price appreciation (the act of estimating the qualities of things and giving them their proper value). Acknowledging that “satisfactory” is a subjective term defined by the individual, Graham explains that a return can be any amount so long as the investor proceeds with a grand degree of intelligence and practices the full definition of investment.

Without the Great Depression, it can be argued that Graham’s definition of investing would have probably have never seen the light of day. But thanks to the drop of bond averages after the Depression hit, a process of separating investing from speculating was needed, thus resulting in Graham’s motto: the margin of safety. With this in mind, Graham sought to unite securities, stocks, and bonds into a unified investment technique. And when exactly does a margin of safety exist? It exists when securities of a stock are on sale beneath their true value. Graham sought to establish a strategy to search for undervalued stocks, which he argued was not an arduous task at all. An investor does not have to figure out exactly a company’s future income, “but to only note the difference between earnings and fixed charges.” But how does an investor figure out whether a company is being undervalued or not? Enter intrinsic value. As defined by Graham in Securities & Analysis, intrinsic value is “that value which is determined by the facts.” Such “facts” are made up of assets, any future definite prospects, earnings, and dividends. When debating a company’s intrinsic value, the most important characteristic to be aware of is a company’s future earnings power (usually an inaccurate calculation). An investor can seek out a company’s intrinsic value by estimating a company’s earning, then multiplying that by a multiplier.

So now here we must look at an example of an investment move made by Warren Buffett based on what he learned from Benjamin Graham. During his tenure as head of his partnership, Buffett noticed how American Express stock dropped $65,000 almost instantaneously due to a scandal instigated by an employee. Buffett’s research showed that the price of the stock was actually below its actual worth, so he made a very brave decision of investing 40 percent ($13 million) of the partnership’s profit. Two years later, the investment had tripled, thereby earning the partnership $20 million. So to sum up what Buffett took from Benjamin Graham: “The key lesson… was that successful investing involved purchasing stocks when their market price was at a significant discount to the underlying business value” (Hagstrom, 25). Next, there is Graham’s all-important “margin of safety,” which when Buffett paid attention to it, he was able to focus on the fluctuations in the stock market. Such a focus could, however, lead an investor to draw his or her attention to speculative characteristics, thus leading an investor to possibly be misguided by such emotions as fear and greed. Furthermore, Graham successfully instilled in Buffett the ability to think independently. Graham made sure that Buffett understood that if one of his investment decisions turned out to be righteous, it was because of his data and reasoning, not because of what the public thinks.

Hagstrom, Robert G.. The Warren Buffett Way. 2. Whiley, John and Sons Incorporated, 2005.

Public stances

• Buffett has repeatedly criticized the financial industry for what he considers to be a proliferation of advisors who add no value but are compensated based on the volume of business transactions which they facilitate. He has pointed to the growing volume of stock trades as evidence that an ever-greater proportion of investors' gains are going to brokers and other middlemen.

• Buffett emphasized the non-productive aspect of gold in 1998 at Harvard: "It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."

• Buffett stated that he only paid 19% of his income for 2006 ($48.1 million) in total federal taxes, while his employees paid 33% of theirs despite making far less money.

• Buffett believes that the U.S. dollar will lose value in the long run. He views the United States' expanding trade deficit as an alarming trend that will devalue the U.S. dollar and U.S. assets. As a result it is putting a larger portion of ownership of U.S. assets in the hands of foreigners. This induced Buffett to enter the foreign currency market for the first time in 2002. However, he substantially reduced his stake in 2005 as changing interest rates increased the costs of holding currency contracts. Buffett continues to be bearish on the dollar, and says he is looking to make acquisitions of companies which derive a substantial portion of their revenues from outside the United States. Buffett invests in PetroChina Company Limited and in a rare move, posted a commentary on Berkshire Hathaway's website why he will not divest from the company despite calls from some activists to do so.

• Buffett believes government should not be in the business of gambling. He believes it is a tax on ignorance.

• Buffett's speeches are known for mixing business discussions with humor. Each year, Buffett presides over Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders' meeting in the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska, an event drawing over 20,000 visitors from both United States and abroad, giving it the nickname "Woodstock of Capitalism".

• Berkshire's annual reports and letters to shareholders, prepared by Buffett, frequently receive coverage by the financial media. Buffett's writings are known for containing literary quotes ranging from the Bible to Mae West, as well as Midwestern advice and numerous jokes. Various websites extol Buffett's virtues while others decry Buffett’s business models or dismiss his investment advice and decisions.

• Buffett favors the inheritance tax, saying that repealing it would be like "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics". In 2007, Buffett testified before the Senate and urged them to preserve the estate tax so as to avoid a plutocracy.

• Buffett has been recognized as most responsible for FASB 123 (r), or Stock Option Expensing on the GAAP Income Statement. When asked about the subject at Berkshire Hathaway's 2004 annual meeting, he compared the United States Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission's decision to override FASB, who wanted to consider company-issued stock-option compensation as an expense, to a bill proposed in the Indiana house for Pi to be changed from 3.14... to 3.20.

• Buffett has held fundraisers for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for president. He has not indicated who he will vote for, but he has expressed that both would make "great Presidents".

• Buffett called the 2007-present downturn in the financial sector "poetic justice"^[19]

• Mr. Buffett was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1997.

Education: Woodrow Wilson High School, Washington D.C. in 1947 The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1947–1949 B.S. University of Nebraska, 1950 M.S. in Economics, Columbia University, in 1951. Employment: 1951–1954 Buffett-Falk & Co., Omaha - Investment Salesman 1954–1956 Graham-Newman Corp., New York - Securities Analyst 1956–1969 Buffett Partnership, Ltd., Omaha - General Partner 1970–Present Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Omaha - Chairman, CEO

Historical timeline

1943: (13 years old)

• Buffett filed his first income tax return, deducting his bicycle as a work expense for $35.

1945: (15 years old)

• In his senior year of high school, Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine, which they placed in a barber shop. Within months, they owned three machines in different locations.

1949: (19 years old)

• In 1949, he was initiated into Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity while an undergraduate at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. His father and uncles were also Alpha Sigma Phi brothers from the chapter at Nebraska, where Warren eventually transferred.

1950: (20 years old)

• Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School after learning that Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, two well-known securities analysts, taught there.

1951: (21 years old)

• Buffett discovered Graham was on the Board of GEICO insurance at the time. After taking a train to Washington, D.C. on a Saturday, Buffett knocked on the door of GEICO's headquarters until a janitor allowed him in. There, he met Lorimer Davidson, the Vice President, who was to become a lasting influence on him and life-long friend.
• Buffett graduated from Columbia and wanted to work on Wall Street. Buffett offered to work for Graham for free but Graham refused. He purchased a Sinclair gas station as a side investment, but that venture did not work out as well as he had hoped. Meanwhile, he worked as a stockbroker. During that time, Buffett also took a Dale Carnegie public speaking course. Using what he learned, he felt confident enough to teach a night class at the University of Nebraska, "Investment Principles." The average age of the students he taught was more than twice his own.

1952: (22 years old)

• Buffett married Susan Thompson.

1954: (24 years old)

• Benjamin Graham offered Buffett a job at his partnership with a starting salary of $12,000 a year. Here, he worked closely with Walter Schloss.
• Susan had her first child, Howard Graham Buffett.

1956: (25 years old)

• Benjamin Graham retired and folded up his partnership.
• Buffett's personal savings are now over $140,000.
• Buffett returned home to Omaha and created Buffett Associates, Ltd., an investment partnership.

1957: (27 years old)

• Buffett had three partnerships operating the entire year.
• Buffett purchased a five-bedroom, stucco house on Farnam Street for $31,500.
• Susan was about to have her third child.

1958: (28 years old)

• Buffett had five partnerships operating the entire year.

1959: (29 years old)

• Buffett had six partnerships operating the entire year.
• Buffett was introduced to Charlie Munger.

1960: (30 years old)

• Buffett had seven partnerships operating the entire year.
• The partnerships were: Buffett Associates, Buffett Fund, Dacee, Emdee, Glenoff, Mo-Buff, and Underwood.
• Buffett asks one of his partners, a doctor, to find ten other doctors who will be willing to invest $10,000 each into his partnership. Eventually, eleven doctors agreed to invest.

1961: (31 years old)

• Buffett revealed that Sanborn Map Company accounted for 35% of the partnerships' assets.
• Buffett explained that in 1958, Sanborn sold at $45 per share when the value of the Sanborn investment portfolio was $65 per share. This meant buyers valued Sanborn at "minus $20" per share, and buyers were unwilling to pay more than 70 cents on the dollar for an investment portfolio with a map business thrown in for nothing.
• Buffett reveals that he earned a spot on the board of Sanborn.

1962: (32 years old)

• Buffett's partnerships, in January 1962, had in excess of $7,178,500 of which over $1,025,000 belonged to Buffett.
• Buffett merges all partnerships into one partnership.
• Buffett discovered a textile manufacturing firm, Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett's partnerships began purchasing shares at $7.60 per share.

1965: (35 years old)

• When Buffett's partnerships began aggressively purchasing Berkshire they paid $14.86 per share while the company had working capital (current assets minus liabilities) of $19 per share, this did not include the value of fixed assets (factory and equipment).
• Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway at the board meeting and named a new President, Ken Chace, to run the company.

1966: (36 years old)

• Buffett closes the partnership to new money.
• Buffett wrote in his letter “unless it appears that circumstances have changed (under some conditions added capital would improve results) or unless new partners can bring some asset to the partnership other than simply capital, I intend to admit no additional partners to BPL.”
• In a second letter, Buffett announced his first investment in a private business — Hochschild, Kohn, and Co, a privately owned Baltimore department store.

1967: (37 years old)

• Berkshire paid out its first and only dividend of 10 cents.

1969: (39 years old)

• Following his most successful year, Buffett liquidated the partnership and transferred their assets to his partners. Among the assets paid out were shares of Berkshire Hathaway.

1970: (40 years old)

• As chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, began writing his now-famous annual letters to shareholders.

1973: (43 years old)

• Berkshire began to acquire stock in the Washington Post Company. Buffett became close friends with Katharine Graham, who controlled the company and its flagship newspaper, and became a member of its board of directors.

1974: (44 years old)

• The SEC opens a formal investigation into Warren Buffett and one of Berkshire's mergers.

1977: (47 years old)

• Berkshire indirectly purchases the Buffalo Evening News for $32.5 million. Anti-trust charges brought.

1979: (49 years old)

• Berkshire began to acquire stock in ABC. With the stock trading at $290 per share, Buffett's net worth neared $140 million. However, he lived solely on his salary of $50,000 per year.
• Berkshire began the year trading at $775 per share, and ended at $1,310. Buffett's net worth reached $620 million, placing him on the Forbes 400 for the first time.

1988: (58 years old)

• Buffett began buying stock in Coca-Cola Company, eventually purchasing up to 7 percent of the company for $1.02 billion. It would turn out to be one of Berkshire's most lucrative investments, and one which he still holds.

1990: (60 years old)

• Scandals involving Greenberg and Gutfreund appear.

1999: (69 years old)

• Buffett is named the top money manager of the 20th century in a survey by the Carson Group, ahead of Peter Lynch and John Templeton.

2002: (72 years old)

• Buffett entered in $11 billion worth of forward contracts to deliver US dollars against other currencies. By April 2006, his total gain on these contracts was over $2 billion.

2004: (73 years old)

• His wife, Susan, passes away.

2006: (75 years old)

• Buffett announced in June that he would gradually give away 85% of his Berkshire holdings to five foundations in annual gifts of stock, starting in July 2006. The largest contribution will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

2007: (76 Years old)

• In a letter to shareholders, Buffett announced that he was looking for a younger successor or perhaps successors to run his investment business Buffett had previously selected Lou Simpson, who runs investments at Geico, to fill that role. However, Simpson is only six years younger than Buffett.

2008: (77 Years old)

• Buffett becomes the richest man in the world according to Forbes.

Personal life

Buffett married Susan Thompson in 1952. They had three children, Susie, Howard, and Peter. The couple began living separately in 1977, though they remained married until her death in July 2004. His daughter Susie lives in Omaha and does charitable work through the Susan A. Buffett Foundation and is a national board member of Girls, Inc.

On his 76th birthday Buffett married his longtime companion, Astrid Menks, who had lived with him since his wife's departure. Interestingly, it was Susan Buffett who arranged for the two to meet before she left Omaha to pursue her singing career. All three were close, and holiday cards to friends were signed "Warren, Susie and Astrid" (as per Roger Lowenstein's book, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist). Susan Buffett briefly discussed this relationship in an interview on the Charlie Rose Show shortly before her death, in a rare glimpse into Buffett's personal life.

Buffett is an avid player of the card game bridge. He has said that he spends 12 hours a week playing the game.He often plays with Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

In 2006, he sponsored a bridge match for the Buffett Cup. In this event, modeled on the Ryder Cup in golf (and held immediately before it and in the same city), a team of twelve bridge players from the United States took on twelve Europeans.

In 2006 Buffett auctioned his 2001 Lincoln Town Car on eBay to raise money for Girls Inc.

Warren Buffett is currently working with Christopher Webber on an animated series with DiC Entertainment chief Andy Heyward. According to information presented by Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on May 6, 2006, the series will feature Buffett and Munger in roles and the series will teach children healthy financial habits for life. Cartoon drawings of Buffett and Munger were displayed throughout the events during the weekend and the special movie before the meeting began was in animation form by Heyward.

In December 2006 it was reported that Mr. Buffett does not carry a cell phone, does not have a computer at his desk, and drives his own car,a Cadillac DTS.

Buffett's DNA report revealed that he is not related to the singer Jimmy Buffett and that his paternal ancestors hail from northern Scandinavia, while his mother's side most likely has roots in Iberia or Estonia.

Philanthropy

In June 2006, Warren Buffett gave approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (worth approximately USD 30.7 billion as of June 23 2006; see [2]) making it the largest charitable donation in history. The foundation will receive 5% of the total donation on an annualized basis each July, beginning in 2006. Buffett will also join the board of directors of the Gates Foundation, although he does not plan to be actively involved in the foundation's investments.

Buffett also announced plans to contribute additional Berkshire stock valued at approximately $6.7 billion to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and to other foundations headed by his three children. This is a significant shift from previous statements Buffett has made, having stated that most of his fortune would pass to his Buffett Foundation. The bulk of the estate of his wife, valued at $2.6 billion, went to that foundation when she died in 2004.[3]

His children will not inherit a significant proportion of his wealth. These actions are consistent with statements he has made in the past indicating his opposition to the transfer of great fortunes from one generation to the next. Buffett once commented, "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing"[4].

The following quotation from 1988, respectively, highlight Warren Buffett's thoughts on his wealth and why he long planned to reallocate it:

"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die. (Lowe 1997:165–166)

Writings

Warren Buffett's writings include his annual reports and various articles. In his article The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville, Buffett condemned the academic position that the market was efficient and that beating the S&P 500 was "pure chance" by highlighting a number of students of the Graham and Dodd value investing school of thought. In addition to himself, Buffett named: Walter J. Schloss, Tom Knapp, Ed Anderson (Tweedy, Brown Inc.), Bill Ruane (Sequoia Fund, Inc.), Charles Munger, Rick Guerin (Pacific Partners, Ltd.), and Stan Perlmeter (Perlmeter Investments) as having beaten the S&P500, "year in and year out".