Tsunami donations Web site author escapes charges
Detective senior constable Jason Hutcheon told ZDNet Australia that the 19-year-old resident of Hobart suburb Glenorchy would not face charges because the Web site had been created in "good faith".
Hutcheon said the Web site's author sincerely did not believe he was doing anything wrong and just copied the idea from a US Web site.
The policeman added that no money was received through the Web site and no complaints were filed against the author. He said that the teenager's PayPal account had not been authorised and so it was not possible to collect money.
Hutcheon said the 19-year-old created the Web site as a fund-raising effort to find his uncle, who is missing in Thailand after the Boxing Day disaster.
Tasmanian police acting detective inspector John Gilbert said the boy had agreed to put up an apology on the Web site www.incybernet.com and that an "official caution" will be given to him.
The Red Cross had said earlier the hoax Web site had asked for donations, saying they would go to worldwide charity organisations. The site's author had placed the Red Cross logo for the charity's tsunami appeal on his Web site, as well as making references to World Vision.
Both charity organisations deny any involvement with Incybernet. The Web site had today been taken down, with only this message appearing "This site has exceeded its limit of 40 Megabytes of transfer per day...."
Hutcheon said that, so far, no other online hoaxes or phishing e-mails had been detected. His comments were echoed by Rob Forsyth, managing director of antivirus company Sophos, who said his company had not yet detected any phishing e-mails associated with the tsunami disaster. He assured that Sophos was "watching this carefully".
However, some hoaxes have emerged worldwide. In Singapore, the government labelled as incorrect a mobile text message spreading throughout the country that said "a very dangerous virus called the Zulican virus" was spreading through seafood and that seafood should be avoided.
In the United Kingdom, a man was arrested for posing as a government official and e-mailing relatives of the tsunami victims saying their loved ones were dead.