NEW YORK: Microsoft Corp. has initiated 129 lawsuits in Europe and the Middle East against website owners who try to steal bank account details of gullible people over the internet, phishers, the company said Wednesday.
It said all these cases are against individuals who attempted to capture log-in and password details of users by setting up fraudulent Hotmail and MSN.com sign-in pages.
The software company has a Global Phishing Enforcement program, which aims to thwart efforts of criminals who create fake websites and try to obtain information on passwords and bank account details by tricking the users. The company uses its technology to crawl the internet to identity such fraudulent webpages.
Microsoft said at the European Union conference on identity theft in Brussels its legal actions led to the conviction of one person in Turkey to a jail term of two-and-a-half years and four cases against teenagers have been settled out of court.
Of the 129 lawsuits, 97 are criminal cases in which the company has provided information along with other complainants.
Security services provider Symantec Corporation says phishing has assumed serious proportions and reported cases have almost doubled in the first half of 2006 to 157,000.
Phishers acquaint people with emails pretending to be from a financial institution or a legitimate organization and ask them to verify personal information such as bank account numbers and passwords or credit card numbers and in the bargain access this information and use it for committing frauds.
Microsoft said the criminal complaints are targeted at real criminals, while its civil suits are against people without criminal intent. In these cases, the accused persons have been allowed to settle the cases after ensuring payment of sums in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 euros.
The company had carried out its own investigations before it pursued legal action. It said most of the investigations and 50 of the criminal complaints were filed in Turkey. Germany was second with 28 criminal complaints and France third with 11. Britain had the largest number of civil cases -- 18 out of a total 32. Cases have also been filed in Dubai, Italy, Morocco and the Netherlands.
