Last Friday we highlighted research by Michael Sutton, security evangelist for SPI Dynamics, regarding phishing sites and Sutton’s contention that free Web hosting services turn a blind eye to the bad guys in order to bolster advertising revenue. Sutton singled out Angelfire, a Lycos property, as being the worst offender in terms of leaving the phishers undisturbed.
Last Friday we asked Lycos to respond.
The better part of a full week later, here’s what the company has to say, followed by an accounting of what’s happened to the 50-plus phishing sites that Sutton flagged on Angelfire:
First and foremost, Lycos takes phishing activities very seriously and in no way condones or turns a blind eye to such activities. If anything, Lycos, and providers like it, are victims of those activities. Indeed, phishing sites provide no benefit to any legitimate business, and, contrary to Mr. Sutton’s contention, do not result in profitable revenues (at least as Lycos is concerned). Any suggestion to that effect with respect to Lycos is uninformed, inaccurate and irresponsible.
In fact, in the case of Lycos, phishing costs more money than the small amounts derived from advertising related to page views generated on those sites. Phishers are by nature parasitic, and take advantage of free services offered by hosting providers (as they do not want their credit card information tracked), while moving from free service to free service as they are shut down. Hosting providers therefore derive no subscription fees from phishers, and certainly do not share in any of the ill-gotten gains they derive by perpetrating their fraud.
At the same time, phishing uses up valuable resources of the hosting company. Technological resources used include storage and bandwidth, while human resources include the inordinate amount of time dedicated by network abuse representatives to investigate and remove phishing sites brought to their attention.
In addition, especially in the case of Lycos, which owns and operates a whole network of Web sites and has numerous product offerings across that network, phishers provide no potential to add to the hosting company’s dedicated and loyal user base which, it hopes, eventually chooses to take advantage of many other product offerings of the company. Worse, they create bad will with legitimate users of the Internet, including with users of the very hosting company whose valuable resources are misappropriated for such activities. Ultimately, phishers provide no value whatsoever to Lycos, only excess costs and wasted resources.
As for Lycos’s efforts to prevent or remove phishing sites, Lycos’s Terms of Service strictly prohibit its members from participating in any phishing activities on its Web sites. When a phishing site is brought to our attention or otherwise discovered by Lycos, it is investigated and removed immediately. Our Network Abuse team removes between 30-100 phishing sites per day. Lycos also offers its users, as do many other providers, a downloadable toolbar with anti-phishing protection designed to alert users to potential phishing Web sites.
Furthermore, Lycos is a member of Digital PhishNet, dedicated to educating Web users and working with law enforcement to combat phishing scams. Finally, within the bounds of applicable law, Lycos diligently and promptly complies with every third-party subpoena received requesting information related to phishing.
Again, we thank you for your inquiry and the opportunity to present the true facts. We are already in the process of reviewing the Angelfire sites you have mentioned here. As always, if they are in violation of our terms of service, they will be taken down.
Regards,
Kathy O’Reilly
Director – Public Relations
LYCOS, Inc.
They’re in the process of reviewing the phishing sites that they were told about almost a week ago. By my quick count, 40 of the sites are still active this afternoon, while 14 have been taken down.
Now scan back up to the PR director’s e-mail for this sentence:
When a phishing site is brought to our attention or otherwise discovered by Lycos, it is investigated and removed immediately.
Guess the meaning of the word “immediately” is open to interpretation.
