Thread: Phishing emails...where to report?

Hello all,

Just received a Phishing email and want to forward it to someone who handles this type of thing. Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by randydance062449

Hello all,

Just received a Phishing email and want to forward it to someone who handles this type of thing. Any suggestions?

AFAIK, there is no organization that handles these things in general. If the Phish is portending to be Paypal or ebay , they ask that you forward the entire message with the complete header showing to spoof@... and either ebay or paypal dot com. If it's related to a bank or credit card I just delete them.

Thanks Joe,

It was from a bank so I went to their website and sent them an email. They promptly responded with an automated response! They told me to delete the email (duh!).

Jeesh! Is there no police involvement in criminal matters anymore?

It is a matter of practicallity.
The ones sending off the email probably have a temporary server in a country where anyting goes with the right bribes. And they themselves will be somewhere else still.

To do something about this would require the cooperation of the FBI (in your case), the govt of the country where the server resides and the govt where the phishers live.

By the time anyone has had the opportunity to do something, that server is long gone to another location.

To do something about a specific phishing op would require vast amounts of manpower, money and diplomacy. And that would kill off one group of phishers, with new ones springing up as soon as the other disappear.

This is one of those things that can only be ended by people themselves.
If noone reacts to those mails, then phishers would not exist.
But as with the nigerian scams, 1 or 2 % of the people falls for it.
Even lawyers, enterpreneurs. Last year even a Belgian notary.

It is strange though.
If I would ask people for their bank details in person or via a pamphlet, they'd all tell me to get lost, but if I do it via email, then it must be allright.

Typically if it gets past my spam filter and it's supposedly from paypal, ebay, or a bank, I report it to the appropriate company. Otherwise I delete it.

The Federal Trade Commission receives about 300,000 samples of deceptive spam – forwarded by computer users – each day, and stores it in a database. The FTC and its law enforcement partners use the database to generate cases against people who use spam to spread false or misleading information about their products or services. To better handle the high volume of spam forwarded to the database, the FTC recently opened a new email box – [email protected]. The old email address ([email protected]) will be phased out.

The FTC’s spam database has served as the basis for FTC cases involving pyramid schemes, money-making chain letters, credit card scams, credit repair scams, bogus weight-loss plans, fraudulent business opportunities, and other scams that were promoted via email.

Consumers who wish to forward unwanted or deceptive spam to the FTC should use the [email protected] address. Whenever you complain about spam, it's important to include the full email header.

Consumers who think they have been taken advantage of by a spam scam can file a complaint with the FTC online at www.ftc.gov. Complaints will help the FTC find and stop people who are using

spam to defraud consumers.

To learn more about how to avoid spam scams and reduce the clutter in your in-box, check out www.ftc.gov/spam.

Most spam is simply unwanted advertising... in a sense its no different than what the mailman delivers every day to my USPS mailbox or the TV blasts at me in the middle of a show. I have a spam catcher that isolates 95% of the spam delivered to me via the internet... but I can't do much about the Cox Cable ads I get 2-3 times in my postal mailbox or the ads shown on TV. The big difference is the cost to the advertiser... the internet costs an infinitesimal fraction of what USPS mail and TV charges to deliver the ad... sooner or later, that will change and the ISP's and governments will figure out how to make money by regulating the internet, mark my words.

Ordinary spam isn't illegal, as far as I know. I throw away the ads I get via the USPS, I mute the ads on TV, and I delete the internet spam I receive. But phishing is quite different. While technically spam (because it's unwanted), it is illegal because it fraudulently represents itself as coming from a respected company. It entices you under false pretenses to reply with information that is private. And, to make the phish believable it usually violates a plethora of copyrights and trademarks. The people running phishing scams are crooks, plain and simple and as Bruno says, they hide out in countries with few laws and even less law enforcement.

Unfortunately, the US government is having about as much success catching phishers as they are catching Osama.