Right of action

The computer age has brought more efficient means of doing tasks. But then again, the technology brought about new ways of causing damage to people. I, myself, was almost a victim of an online "raket."

The story is this: I was chatting with my friends through YM. Suddenly, a friend of mine who went to US buzzed me. I chatted with her for about 5 minutes mostly general stuff like "How are you doing in US?", etc. After the chat, she asked me to send her 3000 pesos worth of prepaid load through YM. She promised to pay me $100 the next day through a courier service company. I thought to myself that it would not be a bad idea to profit from my friend here. I then asked her why won't she just buy some from a Filipino store there. She said she needed it at this minute and that she would be sleeping in 30 minutes. Being a good friend, I hurriedly looked for my keys and told my mom that I was just going to withdraw money and buy load for my friend. Luckily, my mom told me that my sister was tricked by an almost the same modus operandi. And so I went back to the computer and asked her if she knows the complete name of my sister (since the person who uses that ym id is my sister's bestfriend). After that, the person behind that ym id signed out.

Now, my sister just lost P3000 through the internet. Some money was stolen from her yet it seems like we don't have any way of having some course of action against that person and worse, knowing who he or she is. Yes, the NBI may have some ability to track down but we would have to go there to file our complaint etc. Worse, if that person who defrauded my sister did so in an internet shop, the NBI would have no way of tracking the person down. One may say that this was just a petty crime that was committed against us but same may be done to another person who could lose more. There must be some way of filing a complaint online which does not require physical presence at the NBI which takes up so much time. And even if there is, we badly need laws that will make internet users "trackable" in order to deter modus operandi like the one I mentioned above.