Netcraft, a UK-based Internet services company, offers a service to track Web-based occurrences of customers` brands, "helping to identify sites that may pretend to be the customer [usually banks] or to have a relationship with it when none exists".
"Common attacks on banks through Internet content creation include phishing (attempts to trick account-holders into giving their account authentication details), fraudulent association with the bank as part of investment scams, and trademark violation," says the company.
Through the Netcraft Web Server Survey, the company has hostname and domain names for 46 million Web sites, and records of the front page content for 20 million sites. "[We] can check each of these for the occurrence of the bank`s domains, trademarks and commonly used phrases," it adds.
The company`s services include "real-time spam monitoring" for domains and brands, DNS monitoring for registrations matching alert patterns, matching of text on site front pages, matching SSL certificate common names, identification of hosting locations, reporting registration details of matching site domain names and IP addresses, and manual reviewing to classify sites in terms of ownership and suspiciousness.
Netcraft offers e-mail and telephone support.
"This approach helps banks find sites involved in more subtle frauds than mass-mailed phishing attacks which might otherwise go undetected," it says.
Share