Phishers threaten e-commerce
Date: December 27, 2004Source: DenverPost.com
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All these organizations banded together this month to fight phishing, a fast-growing form of online identity theft that is costing billions of dollars and threatening the future of e-commerce.
"It's the fastest emerging threat to our members," said Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for AOL, one of the founding members of the Digital PhishNet group. "It's right at the top of our hit list."
According to a recent study by Gartner Inc., a provider of information technology research, 57 million Americans have received phishing e-mails, which often bear subject lines such as "IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED."
Eleven million Americans have clicked on links inside these credible-looking e-mails, which in turn lead to what looks like the Web page of a bank or e-commerce companies such as eBay, PayPal or Visa.
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