Growing use of Internet banking is helping the banks to reduce cost, be competitive and profitable. But increasing web based frauds like Phishing could discourage the customers from Internet banking. Banks should take preventive measures like educating the customers, logging reports, protecting privacy, etc., besides adopting the preventive strategies suggested by Anti-Phishing Working group before it is too late.
E-Commerce is rapidly expanding its wings across the globe and India is no exception to this phenomenon. Indian banking industry has also embraced this swing by adopting ECS and EDI for knowing account status, funds transfer between accounts and other services like stop payments etc. Now several banks have put their electronic banking facilities on the Internet and are providing the above facilities and many more like billing payments, web shopping, railway and air-ticket booking etc., to their customers at the click of a button. But since web is a public space open to all, these Internet based services also raise new threats for the banks. Financial institutions like banks and merchant websites like Rediff, Amazon, payment sites like Paypal etc., by virtue of the value of information, their customers share with them are becoming the most lucrative target for the attackers. Attackers are formulating newer strategies for attack and one such attack which is in news recently is Phishing.
The term Phishing is used as a metaphor for the term "fishing" in the vast ever increasing sea of Internet users for their confidential data. The use of `Ph' in the word instead of `f' has come from the term "Phreaks" who were involved in "Phreaking" which was a type of attack on telephone system in 1970s. Later in the 1990s the term was used for the hackers who used these techniques for stealing passwords and user-ids for ISPs. It is believed that the term became popular after its use in the famous hacker newsletter "alt.2600" in January 1996. |
