AOL Announces Aggressive New Steps to Combat Phishing, Identity Theft

Business Wire, Oct 5, 2005

DULLES, Va. -- America Online, Inc. (NYSE:TWX):

Behind-the-Scenes Defenses Include Web Crawling, Checking New Domain
 Names, Analyzing Suspicious URLs, Blocking Access to Phishing Sites,
                            Removing Sites

 Announces New and Expanded Partnerships with Anti-Phishing Companies
                    MarkMonitor, Cyveillance, Cyota

     AOL Now Blocking Roughly 8 Million Phishing Attempts Per Day

America Online today announced a range of aggressive new steps to help protect AOL members from "phishing" attacks -- the use of fraudulent e-mail and fake web sites to gather sensitive personal information from users. New partnerships with leading anti-phishing companies MarkMonitor and Cyveillance, and an expanded agreement with existing partner Cyota, now offer AOL members multiple layers of invisible protection against phishing attacks. Through those defenses, AOL announced it is now blocking roughly eight million phishing attempts against its members each day.

Among the strategies that AOL is now employing as a result of the new and expanded partnerships with those companies:

--Early warning systems that check newly-registered domains to see if they mimic legitimate site names, indicating they may be used for phishing.

--Web crawling systems that constantly explore the Web looking for suspicious sites that imitate the text or appearance of real sites.

--URL analysis that checks more than a million suspicious URLs referred by AOL members each day to determine if they are phishing sites.

--Take down efforts that work with system administrators and web hosting providers worldwide to remove known phishing sites from the Web.

--Technical countermeasures that target fraudulent sites to help reduce the risk of personal information being gathered on those sites.

--Round-the-clock blocking of member access to newly discovered phishing sites by AOL's security and mail operations teams.

This effort comes on top of AOL's existing efforts to protect members from phishing attacks by blocking millions of e-mails each day that contain links to known phishing sites before they reach a member's mailbox, as well as blocking member access to known phishing sites through the AOL (R) client.

"The only difference between a phisher and a mugger is that a phisher uses a keyboard and not a gun," said Tatiana Platt, AOL Senior Vice President and Chief Trust Officer. "Phishing and identity theft crimes cost consumers billions of dollars each year, and we will do everything in our power to protect our members from the online criminals who would prey on them. We are proud to be teaming up with the world's best cyber security firms to add these extra layers of protection for our members."

To help identify potential phishing sites, AOL uses member feedback through the millions of e-mails referred via the "Report Spam" button, as well as input from a range of other internal and external sources. When a phishing site is identified, AOL works to block incoming e-mails containing the URL to that site, as well as limiting access to the site through the AOL software. In addition to fraudulent web sites that attempt to spoof pages of the AOL (R) service, AOL also works to protect members from scam sites that imitate other legitimate companies such as banks, credit card issuers, online auctions, and online payment facilitators.

"We are pleased to partner with AOL to make the Internet safer for consumers," said Mark Shull, CEO of MarkMonitor. "This is a comprehensive effort, which leverages MarkMonitor's strong identity-based fraud detection and response capabilities, as well as our deep experience in identity protection for corporations. As a result of this aggressive program, millions of AOL customers can feel more secure and confident in accessing the Internet for the purposes it was intended."

"Phishing is one of the fastest growing forms of online crime and fraudulent destination sites cannot be detected or combated using traditional security tools. We are pleased to partner with AOL to provide robust detection and protection services that add a solid layer of defense for its members," said Panos Anastassiadis, CEO of Cyveillance. "Cyveillance is dedicated to developing technology solutions to protect our customers against increasingly sophisticated threats and will continue to expand our technology to protect against the myriad of new dangers on the Internet."

"Over the past six years Cyota has developed an array of online fraud and authentication solutions deployed today by seven of the top ten banks in the country," said Amir Orad, Executive Vice President at Cyota. "We are excited to take our AOL partnership to the next level as part of our ongoing battle against evolving online threats. Our 24x7 Anti Fraud Command Center works on behalf of AOL and over 40 large bank clients to shut down phishing sites, and mitigate the damages of these online attacks."

In addition to the expanded efforts announced today, AOL has deployed a range of other tools and strategies - both visible and behind-the-scenes - to help protect AOL members from phishing scams. Among them: