McAfee have launched a new Web film series, entitled “H*Commerce: The Business of Hacking You.” The film series was created to expose cybercrime as a serious and universal threat that can no longer be ignored.

The term H*Commerce (or Hacker Commerce) is defined as the business of making money through the illegal use of technology to compromise personal and business data. Starting today, a new episode will be posted every two weeks here until all six episodes have aired.

The project was originally conceived as a series of standalone episodes, each focusing on different aspects of cybercrime - such as phishing, denial of service attacks, online scams, bank scraping, and fraudulent emails. As the film-makers dug deep into the experience of H*Commerce victims, they realized the film’s focus had to be on the complex stories of real people doing normal online things, only to be horribly violated by ruthless cybercriminals.

Seth Gordon, director of films such as the 2008 theatrical release of “Four Christmases,” and the documentary, “The King of Kong - A Fistful of Quarters,” was hired to direct “H*Commerce: The Business of Hacking You.” As Gordon began the research phase of the film, he identified a woman living in Oregon, named Janella Spears, who was a victim of one of the largest and most elaborate email scams on record.

Spears’ story of losing more than $440,000, and the dire effects it had on her family and marriage, became the central theme of the film series. Over the course of the filming, Chris Roberts, a third-party cyber forensic expert was introduced to Ms. Spears to provide advice on how to clean her system, handle the hackers, and help put an end to the cybercrime scams.

Watch, learn and arm yourself with knowledge. Check it out at Stop H*Commerce.