One morning, you receive an e-mail notification from your bank that states it needs to update your credit card data. A fill-in-the-blanks form is attached that asks for information like your address, phone number and password, so you complete it, and hit the Send button. A week later, you are at the hardware store and proceed to charge a few cans of paint. After the cashier unsuccessfully tries to place the charge on your card, you fumble for a few dollars to pay for the paint and rush home to call your bank, which tells you that your has credit card has been overextended.
As someone working at a webhosting company who offers a free trial service we see a steady stream of such scams. We also see the originating IP addresses, and a number of other details. Including the small numbers of people who usually fall for each one. Our steady stream consists of, I suspect, one person in Texas, one person in Romania, and one person in Brazil (who wants you to install very suspect Windows executables, so not technically phishing). Possibly one AOL subscriber who has a bit more clue about how to hide his tracks, but not much more clue. The various big online sites and banks are quick to jump on these sites, but we are very rarely, if ever, approached by law enforcement bodies for copies of logs. As such I'd be surprised if much organised crime was involved, and given one of these Romanians was working out of the same Internet Cafe each time, if anyone had tried to catch him it would probably take one detective with a mobile phone, and a couple of days. Heck the detective could probably just stop there for regular coffee breaks and sort this one on his time off. The problem here is that law enforcement isn't attempted, for whatever reason, not I suspect that it is difficult to do. Compared to other crimes, Internet crimes can, and do, leave a surprisingly detailed trail, usually with exact dates and times.
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Phishing E-Mail Fraud Becoming Epidemic
Posted by: Paul Korzeniowski September 14, 2004 06:00 AMOne morning, you receive an e-mail notification from your bank that states it needs to update your credit card data. A fill-in-the-blanks form is attached that asks for information like your address, phone number and password, so you complete it, and hit the Send button. A week later, you are at the hardware store and proceed to charge a few cans of paint. After the cashier unsuccessfully tries to place the charge on your card, you fumble for a few dollars to pay for the paint and rush home to call your bank, which tells you that your has credit card has been overextended.
Our steady stream consists of, I suspect, one person in Texas, one person in Romania, and one person in Brazil (who wants you to install very suspect Windows executables, so not technically phishing). Possibly one AOL subscriber who has a bit more clue about how to hide his tracks, but not much more clue.
The various big online sites and banks are quick to jump on these sites, but we are very rarely, if ever, approached by law enforcement bodies for copies of logs.
As such I'd be surprised if much organised crime was involved, and given one of these Romanians was working out of the same Internet Cafe each time, if anyone had tried to catch him it would probably take one detective with a mobile phone, and a couple of days. Heck the detective could probably just stop there for regular coffee breaks and sort this one on his time off.
The problem here is that law enforcement isn't attempted, for whatever reason, not I suspect that it is difficult to do. Compared to other crimes, Internet crimes can, and do, leave a surprisingly detailed trail, usually with exact dates and times.