Views on Astronomic Phishing Growth

Online banking fraud has raised by 8,000% over the previous two years, according to Financial Services Authority (FSA), the U.K. regulator. The FSA told a House of Lords committee that the problem caused it to worry.

'Phishing' is the most prominent problem. In this a scammer sends an e-mail, which purports to be from a bank or financial institution that spoofs a user into surrendering his username and password over the Internet banking. phishing yields easy money with a minimum outlay that is distant from both crime and its legal punitive. The astronomic growth in phishing gets down to breaking even international laws.

The banking industry body APACS, on the second week of November 2006 addressed a House of Lords committee to oppose suggestions that it should publish information of every bank on the number of successful phishing attacks.

According to Colin Whittaker, head of security at APACS as the awareness of phishing problem led to a drop in consumer responses, criminals had pumped in greater phishing e-mails sent to consumers at random.

However, for customer skepticism or co-operation in international law to work effectively towards dealing with the phishing phenomenon, a clear picture of its size and nature is necessary. APACS has enough evidence to conclude that phishing scams were becoming more and more sophisticated as time goes by. But, the body believes that Internet banking was safe from threats.

Sandra Alzetta, vice president for Consumer Market Development at Visa too agreed with this view. She imparted to the committee that Visa was also ensuring safety for its customers from online fraud and trying to instill in them more confidence on the Net.

She said they were aware that online shopping gave consumers huge benefits. While Visa does a lot in this area, they know that there still exists some security concerns for which it is working on a number of things related to verification there.

There is a new security scheme that Visa has verified. It consists of a Visa pop-up window that displays on the web page after an online transaction finishes prompting the user to verify passwords and personal details.

Related article: VSO get rid of Over Working Spam Filters

» SPAMfighter News - 12/26/2006