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Newest email threat The newest and most dangerous threat to corporate and at-home email users is email fraud and online identity theft. Online identity theft represents a new form of hybrid email threat, one that uses spam techniques often combined with web-based fraud. Fraudsters masquerade as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, posing as a reputable business, and gather confidential information such as credit card numbers via mass email. Online identity theft has reached epidemic proportions and is a serious problem facing businesses and consumers:
Enterprise impact of email fraud In addition to the potential liability issues email fraud poses for businesses, the productivity drain on businesses whose employees are victims of online identity theft is staggering. The 2002 FBI Internet Fraud Report shows 70% of Internet fraud victims are between the ages of 20 and 50 – in their working prime. According to a September 2003 study conducted by the Identity Theft Resource Center, it takes approximately 600 hours for an individual to recover from identity theft, or about a third of the working hours in a year. Consumer impact of email fraud Identity theft costs consumers an average of $1,400 per fraud as well as up to $16,000 in lost earnings according to a September 2003 report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. But it’s the hidden effects of these attacks can be even more devastating. If you fall victim, you have to spend an enormous amount of time tracking down and closing fraudulent cards and accounts, filing police and FBI reports, rebuilding your credit history and trying to reclaim lost funds. And essential day-to-day tasks are disrupted -- using credit cards, getting a loan, buying a house, buying appliances or perhaps a car on credit. Scam artists can now reach millions with a single click In the past, fraudsters had to go through a time-consuming process to gather personal information, manually going through discarded mail, then using stolen information in individual fraud attempts. By using email and spam techniques, scam artists now have the potential to reach millions of people with the click of a button. Increasingly over the past 6 months, scam artists have created a series of fraudulent emails “spoofing” industry-leading companies such as eBay, PayPal, and Citibank. These fraudulent emails have been distributed to millions through spamming techniques. Most worrying, it is getting increasingly difficult for even a sophisticated user to identify the fraudulent emails. In a recent scam, an email appearing to be from Citibank requested that Citibank customers visit the company’s website to ensure that personal accounts would not be suspended. Citibank customers were then secretly redirected to a fraudulent spoof website where they were asked to submit personal and confidential information including account numbers and passwords. View most recent Fraud Attacks. In a study conducted by MailFrontier Research in September 2003, over 40 percent of users who evaluated the Citibank email scam were tricked into thinking it was legitimate. MailFrontier protects individuals and corporations from email fraud MailFrontier solutions protect business and individual users from email fraud and spam. MailFrontier Matador Anti-Fraud Beta offers anti-fraud protection The desktop software product is now available in public beta and can be downloaded from the MailFrontier website (www.mailfontier.com). MailFrontier Matador Anti-Fraud Beta capabilities include:
MailFrontier Enterprise Gateway module to protect corporate users from fraud An add-on anti-fraud module will be available soon for MailFrontier gateway customers. |
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