A Cure for Identity Theft 

 

“Of the top 20 companies targeted by phishing in 2007, 19 are in the banking industry¹.” It’s scary, but true.  

 

In a world where phishing is a part of life, it’s hard to combat and sometimes even harder to recognize. In a five-year time span, 27.3 million Americans had been victims of at least some form of identity theft, according to a September 2003 FTC survey². It’s so important that you understand the warning signs so you can protect your customers from this dangerous threat. 

 

Have you noticed the URL in the address bar of your bank’s website lately? Maybe you should start noticing. One of the most common, yet effective methods of phishing and identity theft is taking advantage of basic HTML websites. By simply pulling a website off the internet and duplicating it at another ‘fake’ URL, your customers could be directed to a site that looks and feels just like your regular bank site.  But it’s not. As they login to online banking on this fake URL, all of their personal information is being captured by criminals. 

 

You’re probably wondering what’s the better alternative, for a more secure website? It’s the combination of Flash and FREEDOM8. In just logistics, the time and expertise required to rebuild a Flash website would far outweigh the potential benefit to hackers. But with the integration of FREEDOM8, which dynamically loads content in straight from the web server, criminals don’t have a chance.  

 

That’s not to mention the security risks of trying to hack a Flash website with FREEDOM8. Embedded into each FREEDOM8 website is a published URL that hackers don’t have the ability to change, so your site won’t show up at a fraudulent URL. And it doesn’t stop there. If anyone other than the developer tries to move the web files, a red warning screen will appear across the page warning potential victims AND the hacker that the site has been compromised. 

 

Identity theft is the nation’s fastest growing crime, according to FBI statistics². Flash, coupled with FREEDOM8 on your bank website, will protect the transfer of material on your site as well as the website on the server. If you want to protect your customers from personal identity theft, you can’t be too safe. Flash + FREEDOM8 is the cure.  

 

 

¹ Walton, Marsha. Cyberthieves go phishing to rob banks, February 14, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/12/cyber.thieves/index.html. 

² The Police Notebook, April 17, 2008, http://www.ou.edu/oupd/idtheft.htm.