Anti-Phishing Crusader Wages War Against Scammers

The sole aim of Ben Jackson is to prevent individuals from creating phishing sites -- deceptive sites devised to steal individuals' confidential details.

The 26-year-old Jackson hails from New Bedford, Mass., and is a developer at the Department of Public Health of Massachusetts, working on a Web-supported application named Crow's Nest during his free time. "I simply wish to shut down the numerous phishing sites," stated Jackson, the creator of the Mayhemic Labs site, in a Computerworld's report issued on April 4, 2007.

"Crows Nest," monitors recently listed domain names liable to be exploited for phishing, and warns users promptly. Someday, it may prove to be handy device for law enforcement agencies, as per an account issued in Associatedcontent's April 5, 2007 edition.

Presently, Crow's Nest is still evolving while Jackson improves its attributes. However, after completion, the application might prove to be a smart device to counter phishing.

Usually phishing involves impersonating as a genuine online company to obtain a user's login details.

A dubious domain like "www.ebay-customer-survey.com" may be listed for a while before surfacing. Jackson has designed Crow's Nest to avail the paid service "Name Intelligence Inc.'s tool Mark Alert", transferring e-mails notifying when a newly registered domain name carries a specific term.

As per Jackson, Crow's Nest isn't completely flawless since the application doesn't immediately prevent a phishing site from activation. However "the main purpose is to prevent the phishing site from becoming active or checking loss of personal data after the site becomes fully effective," he accounted in PCadvisor's issue dated 5th April 2007.

Jackson allowed the IDG News Service have a trailer of Crow's Nest, which is available via a browser.

The program verifies the domain names utilizing Perl script six hourly checking their functionality and records the endmost time an inspection was done.

The phishing sites would be scanned utilizing the easy Perl script's system, grading them, and especially separating those that seemed unsafe. It would release a directory of these sites, weeks before the genuine sites surfaced. Together with suitable law enforcement awareness, this trouble could be stymied totally.

Related article: Anti-Spam Laws may not Solve the Problem

» SPAMfighter News - 4/13/2007