AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) published a poll this week (reported in CNET and about 300 other places) that warns that one in four Americans is subject to "phishing" fraud emails -- emails that solicit personal account information through legit-seeming emails and websites for banks and so on.
This is a staggering number, if they really mean one in four American internet users, rather than one in four adults online, because that would probably mean just about every other adult in the country.
The article claims that 70% of the recipients were fooled into thinking they were from legitimate companies. Phishing must be an incredibly high profit, high risk scam!
But I'm dismayed that the NCSA used this press release to promote three solutions to security issues for consumers: anti-virus, anti-spam, and firewall software. Shouldn't the most powerful solution be aggressive public education in the risks of online fraud? This story falls short.
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Comments: 2
SPF would help fix this sort of fraud - why isn't it more widely used?
As a result, when I'm on the road, I have to use an incredibly clunky webmail interface to send mail to sites that require SPF.
It may be a defacto standard, but it isn't standard usage, or totally graceful, yet. And it will take a lot more public education for people to understand why they might want to insist on it.
Gets back to the same education issue. We can't really get people to understand why it's low risk ($50) to buy with a credit card online, but you're 10 times more liable with a debit card.
Identity theft seems like a big monolithic scare to most people, I'm afraid. It goes far beyond the shredder!