Identity Theft in Cyberspace: Crime Control Methods and Their Effectiveness in Combating Phishing Attacks

Dear Paypal valued member, It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated due to inactive members, frauds and spoof reports.If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your .onlineexperience and renew your records you will not run into any future problems.However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension Please follow the link below and login to your account and renew your account information .... 1The above communication may appear, at first glance, to be a legitimate request from PayPal to update the accountholder's information.Instead, this e-mail is an example of the most recent form of identity fraud occurring on the Internet--"phishing. 2 In the most common phishing scam, the "phisher" sends an e-mail disguised to look like it is from a financial institution or e-commerce site.3 To appear credible and to attract the recipient's attention, the e-mail uses the company's logos and trademarks and employs "scare tactics" such as threats of account closure.The phishing e-mail typically tells the recipient she needs to update her account information "to avoid fraud" or for "security reasons" and directs her, through a link in the e-mail, to a fake site de-© 2005 Jennifer Lynch 1. 1 received this e-mail, conveniently, while working on this Note.It is reprinted exactly as I received it and includes the e-mail's punctuation and grammatical errors, which were much less glaring when viewed in the context of PayPal's logos and design.This e-mail made it through two spain filters, and caught my attention because I am a PayPal account holder.2. The word "phishing" comes from an analogy to fishing; the e-mail is bait used to lure in "fish" from the "sea" of Internet users.The "f' is changed to "ph" in keeping with computer hacking tradition.Anita Ramasastry, Hooking Phishermen, CNN.COM, Aug. 16, 2004, at http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/16/ramasastry.phishing.3. Although phishers generally use the guise of banks and retailers as "bait," recent phishing scams used the lure of donating to the John Kerry presidential campaign and the chance to buy an advance electronic copy of an upcoming Harry Potter book.See