Friday, May 13, 2005

MasterCard Shuts Down 1,400 Phishing Sites  MasterCard International Inc. said Tuesday that it has shut down nearly 1,400 phishing sites and more than 750 sites suspected of selling illegal credit-card information since launching an ID-theft-prevention program in June (2004). The program also has led to the discovery and protection of more than 35,000 MasterCard account numbers that were in jeopardy of being compromised. 10:59:18 PM    comment []

Phishers Dodge Content Filtering According to Netcraft, some fraudsters are replacing text content on their phony sites with similar-looking images, "making it much more difficult for automated systems to detect the presence of keywords such as 'PayPal' and 'credit card.'" In an online alert, Netcraft illustrated how a phisher could simply embed text within an image to hide it from filters. The text would still be readable by a possible victim, but not by a computer. 10:05:17 PM    comment []