The makers of Norton Antivirus have dropped their lines looking to catch some phish. Symantec plans to announce a new anti-phishing service using their world researchers’ network and desktop programs to help companies spot and stop the Internet scams using their names and likenesses to trick users into giving up sensitive financial and personal information.
Reportedly called the Online Fraud Management Solution (OFM), Symantec said September 13 it would be a package of brand protection services aimed primarily at financial services companies. Symantec said they would use a world network of probes and decoy e-mail accounts to gather, analyze, and identify new phishing scams aimed at OFM customers.
Once a new phish is hooked, Symantec added, the company will build filters blocking the fake messages tied to the scam in question, with the filters deploying automatically to users whose computer programs include Norton AntiSpam, Norton Internet Security, and other Norton products. Symantec will also notify the OFM customer whose brand and likenesses are used and named so the company in question can tip off law enforcement.
Symantec added that they will offer OFM customers access to a user-friendly resource center that includes content to help them teach their own customers about online security threats, and links to products and information helping them evaluate their security exposure and protect their computers.
Symantec’s new anti-phishing product came at a point where the Anti-Phishing Working Group said they spotted over 1,400 unique phish in June, the most recent month where such statistical reporting is now available, and the group added phishing attacks grow at over 50 percent a month.
In August, the U.S. Justice Department announced a major crackdown on Internet crime that included 103 arrests in a sweep called Operation Web Snare, a sweep that was said to have included at least 160 investigations around the United States for crimes that included phishing.
