How Pervasive is Phishing?

Antiphishing.org links us to various useful means to counter phishing. skimming through the website, here are two things that interested me –

1. The phishing and crime-ware map, which shows world-wide distribution.

2. GAIN technology from InternetPerils which claims highly effective ways to monitor internet traffic using efficient data pattern analysis. Good tool that can be considered for usage by FBI data-fusion efforts.

Phishing on Myspace as this article –MySpace phishing scam targets music fans – exposes how far this has gone. The attack is done by circulating spam email to gather credit card information. What makes the situation worse is that the method used in these attacks is simple and doesn’t involve much programming efforts.

Provision to monitor credit info is also a good idea. I have a concern though regarding accessing one’s credit score more often to tracks malicious activities. Would it lead to lowering of the credit score. I have this option to monitor my credit score on my bank account. I have noticed that my credit got reduced when I used to check my credit info more often. Am I doing something wrong here?