Role of Computer Security in Identity Theft (November 2007)

Phishing is becoming a popular form of online identity theft. As an analysis this paper explores the techniques used to construct phishing attacks and also determine how anti- phishing tools work and their effectiveness it sets the footnote at the bottom of this column. More specifically, we want to know what techniques are used in these tools to detect or prevent phishing attacks. dentity Theft is a crime when a criminal uses victim's personal identifying information such as name, social insurance number to commit fraud. Phishing and Pharming are considered as online identity theft. They are distinguished from offline identity theft such as card skimming and dumpster diving, as well as from large-scale data compromises in which information about many individuals is obtained at once. Phishing is typically carried out by email and often directs users to enter details at a website to acquire usernames, passwords and credit card details. Online websites like eBay, PayPal and online banks are common targets. Phishing accounts to $1 billion a year in direct losses in the US. Indirect losses are much higher, including customer service expenses, account replacement costs, and higher expenses due to decreased use of online services in the face of widespread fear about the security of online financial transactions. Both the frequency of phishing attacks and their sophistication is increasing dramatically.