National Consumers League and Anti-Phishing Group Release Report On 'First Principals' for Comprehensive Counter-Phishing Offensive

Business Wire, March 16, 2006

WASHINGTON & LOS ALTOS, Calif. -- The National Consumers League (NCL) and a retinue of industry, government, law enforcement and consumer groups including the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) released a counter-phishing blueprint today that represents a statement of first-principals for the containment and roll-back of email phishing and more technically sophisticated forms of electronic consumer fraud.

The report, released today by the NCL (www.nclnet.org) at a press conference in Washington, D.C. sets out seven fundamental imperatives for organizing a comprehensive counter-phishing strategy. Those essentials are:

--Support for greater and more coordinated consumer education

--Creation of electronic consumer experiences that are 'secure by design'

--Improved user and website authentication

--Better tools for e-crime forensics and law enforcement

--Adoption of strategies to disrupt phishing lifecycle

--Coordinated of "white lists" by isps and domain-name Owners

--Augmented "black lists" to recall phishing emails

"The APWG is proud to have worked with NCL and its counter-phishing working group in the development of this vital communique," said APWG Chairman David Jevans. "It conclusively distills a lot of the long conversations that all the counter-phishing stakeholders have been having with themselves into definitive principals. Nothing is more important in effectively orchestrating the counter-offensive than minting those organizing, catalytic ideas. Bravo, NCL."

Susan Grant, Vice President for Public Policy at the National Consumers League said, "By joining forces with the Anti-Phishing Working Group and others that are concerned about this problem, we'll be able to build stronger levees against the tidal wave of phishing that hurts both consumers and legitimate companies trying to do business online."

The report, "A Call for Action: Report from the National Consumers League Anti-Phishing Retreat" emerged from a three-day conference of some 40 representatives of major technology companies, financial services firms, university research centers, law enforcement organizations and the APWG, the world's largest counter e-crime coalition with a membership of some 1500 companies, institutions and government agencies worldwide. The NCL retreat was sponsored by American Express, First Data and APWG Steering Committee member, Microsoft Corporation.

The full report is available online at:

http://www.antiphishing.org/reports/nclphishingreport.pdf