Posted on 03/01/2006 2:00:19 PM PST by nickcarraway
AOL filed three civil lawsuits yesterday against "several major phishing gangs". The lawsuits are the first by a major ISP to cite Virginia's anti-phishing statute, the first in the US, adopted in July 2005.
The suits also cite applicable Federal laws, including the Lanham (Trademark) Act, and the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.
AOL is seeking total damages of $18m in the series of lawsuits which allege that the phishing gangs victimised AOL and CompuServe members through emails that attempted to drive them to bogus websites.
The three lawsuits, filed in the US Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, target "aggressive and complex identity thieves" who attempted to lure AOL members to websites that mimicked the appearance and feel of official AOL or CompuServe sites.
Once directed to the fake websites, AOL and CompuServe members were encouraged to enter their screen names, passwords, billing and other financial information.
The phishers then used this information to traffic in stolen identities, compromise credit cards and steal the personal identities of innocent internet users.
According to the lawsuits, the phishing groups used "vast resources and creativity" to intricately design hundreds of fake websites to mislead consumers. AOL has stored tens of thousands of examples of phishing emails transmitted by the gangs.
"Phishing scams have grown more sophisticated and more dangerous to consumers," said Curtis Lu, senior vice president and deputy general counsel at AOL.
"AOL is using every legal and technical means at its disposal to drive phishers from the AOL service to protect our members and to make the internet a safer place for all consumers."
The phishers targeted in the lawsuits spoofed a variety of prominent internet brands, including AOL's.
And apparently some of them did? But then those are people who use AOL.
Hey, I was an AOL member .... for the length of the free trial. It was kind of fun, like going undercover in enemy territory. Kind of disappointing when I'd mention AOL's commie nature to people and they'd say "huh?"
Not that I object to the action, but why is a "phising" law require when this is fraud and conspiracy?
Whatta virtual world o' crime.
Like the phishers are going to have on the books assets to sieze...
This is a PR stunt, nothing more.
On another thread there's a "spoofing" law for fake caller ID's -- which is basically fraud and conspiracy.
Every industry has got to have its own little buzzwords, I guess.
(Oh, and it's "phishing", not "phising". Phising is internet slang for doing a bodily function on the CPU, thereby shorting it out.)
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