Internet fraud on the rise, Cheap Internet Service, Low Cost Internet Access

Last year, EarthLink, the big Internet access provider, went hunting for "phishers."

It started a campaign to track down people who were sending e-mail messages that pretended to be from EarthLink but were actually fraudulent attempts to steal customers' passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information. What it found was that of the dozen or so people it could clearly identify as engaged in the practice known as phishing, more than half were under 18.

In its latest sweep, EarthLink discovered a lot of phishing e-mail messages coming from computers in Russia, other East European countries and Asia. The e-mail messages, and the Web sites they directed people to, were becoming much more technically sophisticated.

"A year ago, there were some phishers out there, and it was mostly teenagers and other people fooling around," said Les Seagraves, EarthLink's chief privacy officer. "Now I think we are moving to more criminal enterprise."

Phishing attacks are growing rapidly, impersonating Internet service providers, online merchants and banks. Government officials and private investigators say that all signs point to gangs of organized criminals - most likely in Eastern Europe - as being behind many of the latest efforts.

Source: New York Times written by Saul Hansell

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