Representatives from a number of industries and international law enforcement agencies today announced the establishment of Digital PhishNet, a collaborative enforcement operation that unites industry leaders in technology, banking, financial services and online auctioneering with law enforcement to tackle "phishing," a destructive and growing form of online identity theft.

Digital PhishNet establishes a single, unified line of communication between industry and law enforcement, so critical data to fight phishing can be compiled and provided to law enforcement in real time. Phishing is the particularly harmful and deceptive emerging online threat that involves directing consumers to phony Web sites, usually through forged or "spoofed" spam e-mails, to input personal financial information such as credit card numbers and passcodes. While other industry groups have focused on identifying phishing Web sites and sharing best practices and case information, Digital PhishNet is the first group of its kind to focus on aiding criminal law enforcement and assisting in apprehending and prosecuting those responsible for committing crimes against consumers through phishing.

Digital PhishNet brings together industry leaders from nine of the top 10 U.S. banks and financial services providers, four of the top five Internet service providers and five digital commerce and technology companies, and works with top federal and international law enforcement agencies.

Developing supporters of Digital PhishNet include America Online Inc., Digital River Inc., EarthLink Inc., Lycos Inc., Microsoft Corp., Network Solutions, VeriSign Inc., the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS). More information can be found at http://www.digitalphishnet.org .

"The key to stopping phishers and bringing them to justice is to identify and target them quickly," said Dan Larkin, unit chief at the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). "Phishers create and dismantle these phony sites very, very fast, stockpiling credit card numbers, passcodes and other personal financial information over the course of just a couple of days, in order to avoid detection. Digital PhishNet is a powerful response to this type of online fraud because it facilitates critical data collection between a large number of the targets of these crimes -- those who are on the front lines of the fight against phishing -- and establishes a pipeline directly to law enforcement, in real time, before the phisher has had time to disappear back into the anonymity of cyberspace."

Participants in Digital PhishNet have come together to actively and aggressively seek out phishing Web sites and identify the origins of the spam e-mails designed to deceive consumers into visiting these phony Web sites. The law enforcement supporters of Digital PhishNet have formed an alliance with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that will use the aggregated data, along with various tools and strategies, to identify and arrest those suspected of perpetrating phishing scams.

Deceptive and insidious phishing scams require an adept and multifaceted approach by industry and law enforcement. Phishing scams usually are initiated through spam e-mail messages that direct consumers to visit a phony Web site -- often an exact replica of a legitimate corporate Web site -- and ask for passwords and other sensitive personal or financial information. Phishers "spoof" or falsify e-mail addresses, purporting to be associated with the legitimate organizations they are targeting, and instruct consumers to visit these sites in order to "update their account information." In many cases, phishers also download spyware and viruses onto consumers' computers to track their online activity or cause damage to their files and hard drives.