AOL launches new phishing protection

AOL has launched a range of new initiatives to help protect its customers from phishing attacks.

Phishing attacks use fraudulent e-mail and fake web sites to gather sensitive personal information such as passwords and bank details from users.

AOL says it is now blocking roughly eight million phishing attempts against its members each day, and has implemented a range of new protections, including:

Early warning systems that check newly-registered domains to see if they mimic legitimate site names, indicating they may be used for phishing.

Web crawling systems that constantly explore the web looking for suspicious sites that imitate the text or appearance of real sites.

URL analysis that checks more than a million suspicious URLs referred by AOL members each day to determine if they are phishing sites.

Technical countermeasures that target fraudulent sites to help reduce the risk of personal information being gathered on those sites.

Tatiana Platt, AOL senior vice president, said: “The only difference between a phisher and a mugger is that a phisher uses a keyboard and not a gun.”