Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 19:21 by Rich Kavanagh To help battle the rising tide of email phishing scams, devious email hoaxes, and complex identity theft on the Internet, AOL has filed three civil lawsuits against several major phishing gangs today, seeking total damage awards of $18 million. The lawsuits are the first by a major ISP to cite Virginia's first-in-the-nation anti-phishing statute, adopted in July 2005. The lawsuits also cite applicable Federal laws, including the Federal Lanham Act, and the Federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. AOL's lawsuits allege that these phishing gangs - some believed to operate from abroad - victimized AOL and CompuServe members through emails that attempted to trick and lure them to fake web sites of legitimate online companies, for the purpose of fooling them into giving up their personal identifying information, such as AOL screen names, passwords, and credit card information. More here: http://itvibe.com/news/3961/ -- Regards, John Durham <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig> ICQ number 112663246 Fax/Phone 64 4 5286786 Award winning web site at http://modecideas.com?sig PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/index.html?sig Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied. -- -------list-services-below----------- Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig> Freelists login at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi List archives at http://www.freelists.org/archives/pchelpers PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/discuss.htm?sig Latest news live feeds at http://modecideas.com/indexhomenews.htm?sig Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied.