Phishing Crusader Lauds Senate Bill
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Stevens joined with Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., on Monday to introduce a bill aimed at curbing the practice of fraudulent e-mail addresses or fake Web sites to lure recipients into providing personal or financial information. See CongressDaily's AM for more information on the "phishing" proposal.
Anti-Phishing Working Group Secretary General Peter Cassidy told Tech Daily Dose after deadline that "the global e-crime crisis requires technological, forensic and legislative innovation commensurate with the threats to the civil order posed" and the bill is a step in that direction. The bill updates and consolidates the spirit and letter of a number of laws already on the books spread across a number of statutes, Cassidy said.
"They're available but hardly specific to the crimes at hand in phishing scams -- like spoofing a domain name to imitate a trademark. Hopefully, prosecutors would find useful tools in this legislation should it pass into law," he said.
According to the latest report by APWG, which examined October statistics, 31,650 unique phishing reports were submitted to the group -- a decrease of nearly 7,000 from the previous month. October saw a major hike in hijacked brands to 120, up from 92 in September, the report stated. Read more about the report here.
The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, whose members include Dell Computer, Eli Lilly, Hilton Hotels, and other intellectual property owners also lauded the legislation. The group's president, Josh Bourne, said the bill is "timely and necessary" to protect consumers and businesses alike from the latest batch of fraudulent and deceptive Internet practices.
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