July 10, 2006
The Phisher Kings - Phishing Crime Comes To VoIP
Phishing is defined as the act of sending targeted, unwanted emails to people in the hopes of tricking them into giving up their financial details, be it credit card numbers, banking codes, or even Paypal or eBay account information. This is usually accomplished by getting the victims to click on a fraudulent website link, using the graphics and text copied directly from a legitimate service-based website. Phishing is related to spam but is typically more targeted to small groups of people at a time. Unfortunately, people are falling prey to phishing, and because of past successes via email, it didn't phishers long to apply their wiles to VoIP.
Vishing, or VoIP-based phishing, is already becoming a problem, according to a couple of very recent reports. With the proliferation of free VoIP software and services such as Skype, Sightspeed and Gizmo Project, it's also easy when the software often has SDKs (Software Development Kits) that can be used to build vishing applications right into fraudulent websites.
PC World reports that such fraudulent websites sometimes appear to offer financial services. Such sites offer a "Skype me" type of button, which legitimate sites also offer. But when you call the fraudulent site's Skype phone number, they ask you via recorded message to leave credit card details. Another new scam is getting auto-dialed calls via VoIP telling you that there are problems with your credit card. An IT Observer article elaborates further.
It goes without saying that vishing is going to be a big problem if there isn't a concerted effort in the VoIP industry to come up with solutions now.
Additional sources: Business Week.
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