SBC Unresponsive to, Identity Theft, Internet Fraud, Complaints
Date: November 17, 2004Source: Onlypunjab.com
After receiving multiple email containing what was clearly internet fraud with links leading to web pages cleverly disguised as eBay with the sole purpose of identity theft, SurfSafely.com founder Mark Brasche leapt into action. With sophisticated software designed to trace the origin of the rogue web site Mr. Brasche quickly learned that the pages were being hosted on a home computer somewhere in San Francisco connected to the Internet by way of a DSL modem using SBC Internet Service.
“This is so unbelievably brazen” said Mr. Brasche “that the user is either incredibly stupid, the victim of a third party who has seized complete control of his computer without his knowledge or a government employee authorized to conduct a study of how many people he can actually dupe into forking over unreasonably sensitive information.”
Regardless of the motive, Mr. Brasche has tried unsuccessfully for two straight days to contact SBC to have the site shut down. As a last resort Mr. Brasche contacted eBay directly to see if they can motivate SBC to shut down the offending account. “SBC’s unresponsiveness can only lead me to conclude that they either condone the activity, don’t regard it as a real threat to Internet users or simply do not have the resources needed to address this type of Internet fraud” Mr. Brasche said. Readers of his monthly newsletter were warned again this month of the recent flurry of Internet scams.
Identity theft is one of the fastest growing Internet fraud crimes online. Internet service providers and web hosting companies simply must be equipped to deal with these situations quickly. If they cannot or will not, ultimately the heavy hand of government will force them to.
About SurfSafely.com: With 76,770 active links SurfSafely.com is the single largest searchable directory of voluntarily labeled web sites in the world. Only sites labeled with the ICRA or SafeSurf labeling standards are permitted in the directory.
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