Friday, October 09, 2009

Phishing Continues to Soar

Via OUT-Law and Future Identity

"The number of phishing attacks on online banking systems has risen by 26% in the first half of this year. Phishing is the technique that was used to uncover the tens of thousands of Hotmail, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail passwords revealed this week.

Phishing is the practice of creating fake versions of websites and asking users to enter their login details. Those details are then stored so that they can be used on the real sites.

It was revealed last week that more than 10,000 users of Microsoft's Hotmail service had had their details harvested by phishing attacks. They were then published online. It emerged this week that a similar problem had emerged in relation to the details of users of other web mail services such as Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail."


Pangloss has long predicted that rises in phishing will inexorably lead to banks becoming more and more reluctant to pick up the can , and instead imposing fault based filters on recompense. Should regulation in this area more effective than the current Banking Code not be part of the general reconsideration right now of the duties as well as profits of banks? Hmm. It will be interetsing also to see what constraints the new Payments Directive imposes. AS Future Identity points out, banks gain at least as much from a working and trustworthy online banking system as they lose, given the rundown in high street banking services.

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