Identity Theft News

Sarkozy smells a phish

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has derided the state of email security after being caught out by a phishing scam.

Government officials confirmed that the president has had several small sums of money removed from accounts by scammers who were able to glean account details from him in a phishing email attack, said the Journal Du Dimanche.

Following on from this, Luc Chatel, secretary of state for consumer affairs, told French radio that there had been a nine per cent increase in internet identity theft and fraud cases over the course of the last year.

"These cases are sufficiently rare that we haven’t had to really organise ourselves, but [they are] sufficiently serious for us to reflect on how to improve the system," he said.

Elsewhere, threatchaos.com has noted that complacency in the online banking sector will only serve as validation of fraudulent activities and lead to the proliferation of more phishing scams in the future.ADNFCR-1765-ID-18836360-ADNFCR

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