MasterCard culls 1,400 phishing sites

MasterCard International has shut down about 1,400 phishing or spoof sites globally over the past 11 months.

Most of the phishing attacks on the credit card company were hosted by sites located in the United States (47 per cent), and other nations from Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. Almost a quarter originated from the Asia-Pacific region. In April, Korea accounted for the largest number of phishing sites in Asia-Pacific, followed by China, Taiwan, Japan and Australia.

Phishing scams trick customers into revealing their personal information such as account details and credit card numbers, by using fraudulent email and websites that appear to originate from well-known brands.

Last June MasterCard launched an international campaign - called Operation Stop IT - in a bid to curb online identify theft. It roped in security software vendor NameProtect as a partner and started round the clock internet monitoring to identify online credit-card trading rings, phishing scams and other forms of payment fraud that target MasterCard's financial partners and cardholders.

Fraudulent sites are reported in real-time to MasterCard, which then informs law enforcers and the relevant internet service providers to take the sites offline.

Tim Morris, MasterCard's Asia-Pacific vice-president and regional head, security and risk management, said in a press statement: "With strong collaborative efforts in place, we are able to take the quick, decisive action that has been integral to our success."

The number of sites touting the sale of credit card numbers has also fallen from the time MasterCard first launched its initiative: 139 such sites were identified in June 2004 compared to only 10 as of 4 May this year.

Operation Stop IT also detected (up to 7 January) 133 potential phishing sites that exploited the 26 December tsunami tragedy.