Library Boy: Binational Canada-USA Government Report on Phishing

On Wednesday of last week, the U.S. Justice Department and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC) jointly released a report on phishing.

The report was written by the Binational Working Group on Cross-Border Mass Marketing Fraud.

"[Phishing is a] general term for the creation and use by criminals of e-mails and websites that have been designed to look like they come from well-known, legitimate and trusted businesses, financial institutions and government agencies. These criminals deceive Internet users into disclosing their bank and financial information or other personal data such as usernames and passwords."

"Phishing continues to be one of the rapidly growing classes of identity theft scams on the Internet that is causing both short-term losses and long-term economic damage. In May of 2006, over 20,000 individual phishing complaints were reported, representing an increase of over 34% from the previous year. Recent data suggests that criminals are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to their e-mails, resulting in an increasing number of consumers who have suffered credit card fraud, identity fraud, and financial loss. Estimated losses from phishing attacks are now in the billions of dollars worldwide, and those losses are growing."

The Binational Working Group published an earlier report in 2004 on identity theft. PSEPC has more about phishing on its website.

Earlier Library Boy posts about phishing and identity theft include: