Spam a la Grecque ?? coming right up!

I was going through my hotmail junk box this morning ( a good practice if you don’t trust Microsoft’s spam filters, or who ever else they are buying the service from).  To my surprise i came across a spam message claiming to be from a Greek bank!! So someone figured out i spoke Greek, probably cause some Greek talking forum i signed up to either sold the member email addresses to spammers, their database got dumbed or they decided to start spam phishing campaigns. I doubt that the Russian/Nigerian mafia decided to hit Greeks for the fun of it (i mean, the guys are broke, it isn’t worth the trouble!!).  (the Turkish mafia could be behind this as well but i again doubt it )

Anyway, enough with the conspiracy theories.  To cut to the chase have a look at the email i got:

As usual the link to read your “security” message takes you to compromised website, in this case of some rug cleaning company.

Have a look at the screen shot from the site (i don’t recommend visiting it if you don’t know what you are doing as the site might also be serving malware).

Greek Phishing Spam

Pay attention to the fact that they took screenshots and placed them on the page to make the user feel as if they were on the real site.  Not sure if they were too lazy to replicate the original or thought it was more fitting to the eyes of the unsuspected victims.

In any case this is my first greek phishing spam message and it got me all excited

If you are from Cyprus you probably know what ETEK is.  For the rest, it is the corresponding body of the British Engineering Council.  What has unfortunately happened in Cyprus though is that this body has managed to include people from the computer science discipline demanding that they are registered and pay an annual license for practicing their profession.  This is apparently mandatory by law.

Point 1: why would someone with a computer science background need to register as an engineer although they are not, in the traditional sense, engineers.  Why should they not be registered with a body such as the Cyprus Computer Society, whos corresponding British body seems to be responsible for evaluating, recognizing and registering degrees of relevant disciplines?

Point 2: The main drive behind someone wanting to register is that the biggest employer in Cyprus, the government, dictates that for someone to be able to compete for an A8 level position (pay-wise a starting salary of 2000 euro gross) they need to be registered with the body of ETEK.

Point 3: ETEK fails to recognize and provide levels of membership, thus either allowing someone to be registered or not, but does not offer registration and recognition of technicians, or even take into account the years of experience and thus allowing someone to be registered, if they for example graduated from a diploma awarding institution such as the late Higher Technological Institute in Cyprus. It has become a binary decision of yes or no, without even allowing for the government to tap to the potential and expertise of a lot of people out there whos degrees might not be adequate for registration.

point 4:  cynicism – If ETEK was aiming to make more money by simply registering Computer Science graduates then why not allow for levels of membership, more people registering = more money.  Also government positions will then be able to request for different levels of membership depending on the position.  Better yet why not allow another body such as the Cyprus Computer Society to evaluate degrees and eligibility for registration and the academic capabilities of the person at hand .

Cases:

1. Person graduates from HTI (ATI) as an engineer with years of experience working for a construction company such as J&P and still can not register with ETEK in Cyprus
2. Person graduates from a UK University with a degree whos title doesn’t match Computer Science or any other UCY title and as such can not register without an MSc.  Such a title could be computing studies.
3. Graduate with an Management Information Systems degree, not a pure science degree (again note the word science and not engineering.)

Conclusions are up to you to make, but i will quote the following from the official page of ETEK:

Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ΕΤΕΚ)

The Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ΕΤΕΚ) is the statutory Technical Advisor to the State and is the umbrella organisation for all Cypriot Engineers. It was established by Law 224/1990 and is a Public Law Body with an elected Governing Body. It has an office and a Service capable of promoting its objects.

Have a read through the rest of the page and see what you think.

The legislation and system itself, although aiming to protect professionals and their professions, has managed to impose a sort of monopoly and word play where people who could not for various reasons get a degree which would allow them to register with ETEK (reasons being that they could not afford to go to a University abroad during their time of studies), but do have the skills, are denied the opportunity to compete on equal terms with others for positions or have been denied the ability to exercise their profession.  They are denied this by a system which has not been designed and implemented correctly.

A group of people who currently can not register with ETEK and thus can not either practice their profession legally or be able to claim such, or higher ranked, government positions with their degrees (or diplomas) and gathering people who want to simply unregister from ETEK (yet another daunting task).

To find them or contact them simply go to
http://anti-etek.com/

To have a look at the official site of ETEK go to
http://www.etek.org.cy

You might also want to have a look at the following page: http://www.etek.org.cy/page.aspx?page_id=84

P.S.
In case you are wondering, yes i am registered with ETEK, and i do believe in the importance of such a body to exist as it will better control who can practice a profession.  But i also believe in fairness and equal opportunities and seeing injustices such as this, which can be fixed, leaves me hoping for change.

Adding the following:

I did not want to touch on this subject but seeing as it might help, i want to raise the issue of people who work in the field of IT (or other engineering subjects for that) but have no relevant degree or no degree at all.   Where do they stand in terms of the law.

My builders did not have a licence from ETEK, did they need someone supervising them with a mechanical engineering degree and an ETEK registration?

Some do have certifications but not all.  So what happens with them in terms of ETEK? or other such bodies, i wonder