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Netcraft crafts anti-phishing service

Early warning

Netcraft has introduced an early warning service to alert banks to phishing scams.

The service aims to help customers identify fraudulent sites which pose as the real thing to hoodwink the unwary into handing over confidential financial information. Promoted through spam messages, these bogus sites are becoming increasingly common.

Netcraft's service enables banks and other financial organisations to track occurrences of their name, brands, trademarks and slogans on the Internet.

Netcraft is offering to supply the hosting locations and registration details of offending sites as part of its service. Manual reviewing of suspect sites by Netcraft takes place in order to minimise the chances of false alarms.

Phishing scams, fraudulent association with the bank as part of investment scams, and trademark violation can all be identified more quickly through Netcraft's service, according to the company.

The aim is similar - though the approach is different - to an anti-phishing introduced by anti-spam firm Brightmail last year. Brightmail looks at spam to identify scams whereas Netcraft probes registered domains.

These services are best seen in the context of industry-wide initiatives designed to minimise the impact of phishing scams. User education is foremost in these efforts. ®

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