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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Mar 3rd 2005 11:26am





Does Phishing Need A Separate Law?

from the it'll-get-good-publicity... dept

While Congress has mostly been focused on anti-spyware legislation lately, it appears that some want to create an anti-phishing law as well. Of course, phishing is already very much illegal, but why should that stop a politician's chance to get some press coverage? The claim here is that phishing is only illegal after someone is defrauded -- and this law will make the actions required to phish (the fake website and fake email) illegal as well.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Subject Given

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    BtG, Mar 3rd, 2005 @ 11:30am

    and how, exactly, is this law going to affect those organized crime syndicates in eastern europe to stop their phishing attempts? I must have missed that part.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    More Useless Laws, Just What We Needed

    identicon
    knight37, Mar 3rd, 2005 @ 1:55pm

    Making a fake site already IS illegal. 99% of these fake sites use the logos and other corporate images of the sites they're trying to pretend to be, so that's a copyright infringement right there. In fact, thanks to the DMCA, all the financial institution or wherever that is being infringed has to do is send cease and desist letter to the ISP of the offending site. THAT IS, of course, if the site is hosted in the United States, and also assuming that the ISP isn't part of the criminal organization. I mean, you don't tell a mobster "stop doing crime" and they just go "okay, sorry about that." But the DMCA doesn't apply to foreign web-sites, which most of the phishing sites are. But FRAUD is already illegal too, it doesn't matter whether or not they actually got someone's money from it yet or not.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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