George Preston

Leicester, UK

It Manager

To lame the blame for this at the door of consumers is unreasonable. In particular, the customers who filled in details for a bank they weren't customers of could simply have thought that company politics/acqusitions/mergers were the cause.

I am an IT professional and am amazed at how legitimate emails can look - and I would give up trying to explain to someone non-technical (or even just slightly ofay with the net) the differences between e8ay.co.uk and ebay.co.uk - there's no point, because at every turn we are presented with 'wacky' branding and potty names for companies. People are desensitised to slight changes in identification nowadays, probably because, ironically, their bank has changed its name and branding four times in the last year and they no longer identify it.

The article contradicts itself somewhat, citing security artifacts that can be easily faked (padlock sign, https://, etc), then saying that cunsumers should be on the lookout for these?! More control needs to be put in place for pages on the web. Shaking windows, fancy graphics and plugins everywhere might look good and make the marketing-types smile, but these come with a downside; poor security and more unwanted inteference with the browsing experience.