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Sites Want To Hook And Gut Phishers
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-11-14
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
A trio of websites offer people the opportunity to report the phish emails they receive in order to thwart the various scams and their perpetrators.
 | | "Reelin' em in..." |  |
Many people have adopted the habit of dumping suspicious emails from their inboxes into the Trash bin, but there are always some that slip through and look very legitimate. Examining the email and the ubiquitous link to a fake site usually reveals the URL leads to an unknown server instead of the legitimate site.
Instead of just tossing it at that point, the proactive user can submit the email to sites that can do more to combat the phishers. At CastleCops, their Phishing Incident Report & Termination Squad of volunteers accept and investigate phish submitted to them.
PIRT's efforts have led to the termination of hundreds of phishing sites. A number of organizations, including the FBI and US-CERT, subscribe to the PIRT feed to keep tabs on this information.
OpenDNS recently launched PhishTank, which depends on its community of registered users to verify submitted phish as actual threats. OpenDNS uses that verified information to help identify and block phishers from reaching OpenDNS users.
Along with accepting submitted phish, PhishTank makes their repository of phishing information available to developers via an open API. Third parties can incorporate PhishTank's data into their anti-phishing programs and plug-ins.
Symantec has operated its Phish Report Network since early in 2006. Their more formal approach to phish fighting accepts visitor-contributed phish, and provides that information as a blacklist to makers of anti-phishing products.
Legitimate organizations like financial institutions that send information to consumers also participate in the Network. They can send the blacklist of phishers that co-opt their brands to receivers of the Phish Report data, where it can be used to stop verified thieves.
Participation can help improve all of these efforts. CastleCops and Symantec accept suspected phish submissions through an online form that uses a captcha field to verify a submitter is not an automated program. PhishTank requires a free registration to participate fully, but visitors to the site can determine if a URL is in its phish database by submitting it.
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Tag: Phishing
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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