Crackdown on web burglary gangs

[Al-khiyal]

The sending of bogus emails asking unsuspecting recipients for personal details - a practice known as phishing - has replaced spam as the biggest threat to internet users after soaring by 44 per cent in six months.

Phishing is increasingly the confidence trick of choice for gangs in eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, often to fund drugs crime or, according to Interpol, terrorism. Emails are sent out to try to make people enter personal details on fake web pages made to resemble real sites, often those of banks. The details are then used to spend the user's money without their knowledge.

'Three years ago most people would be complaining about the amount of spam,' said Neil Holloway, president of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa. 'Now phishing has become the next wave of cyber crime. Some will put a site on the web for two or four hours then take it down again, making it hard to track. The challenge is that the internet has no borders. There is no silver bullet....'

"....Of the 53 legal actions already under way, Turkey has the highest number, 20, followed by France, with 10, and Spain, which has seven. Microsoft said phishers tend to host their site in a country with a historical link to their own. For example, phishing sites hosted in France could be traced back to Morocco and Algeria. There was a similar relationship between German-speaking countries and Turkey, and the UK and the Middle East...."

Crackdown on web burglary gangs

[Al-khiyal]

L’Algérie prépare une loi contre la cybercriminalité