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November 24, 2004 | Comments: (0)

I'd rather not be phishing

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The Anti-Phishing Working Group this week reported on the October statistics for online phishing schemes. As with most security statistics, the results were a little scary. According to the report, 1,142 sites were used for phishing, up 110 percent from the previous month's figures.

Phishing, as most of you know, occurs when scam artists send fraudulent e-mails to consumers to lure them to Web sites that appear to be the home page of a well-known financial institution. Frequent targets are Paypal and most national banks. The e-mails instruct the consumer to leave account information on the site, which the scammers then use to steal private account information. I'm knowledgeable enough to just delete the messages or better yet, block the sender from my e-mail. But I shudder when I think about my mother receiving one of the e-mails.

It all sounds dire, but Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the APWG, puts it in a little historical perspective. "Fraud nearly brought down the catalog industry in the early 1970s," Cassidy told me. Cassidy said that as the catalog and 1-800 number industry was taking off, credit card fraud because a huge problem. "The catalog industry and people in the 1-800 industry demanded the credit card people do something because their industry was threatened by fraud. That led to several changes that kept the fraud to a minimum. I think the same thing will happen here," said Cassidy.

Maybe it will. In the meantime, to quote Sgt. Phil Esterhaus from Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there."

Posted by Bob Francis on November 24, 2004 01:10 PM

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