Counterfeiting & Spear Phishing

Media Release
2 March 2009

Counterfeiting & Spear Phishing - Growth Scams Of 2009

Trade Me is picking counterfeiting and spear phishing as the two online growth scams of 2009, and is calling for greater co-operation between compliance agencies to help put online scammers in jail.

Trade Me is expecting counterfeiting attempts to increase over 2009, with more counterfeiters trying to enlist foreign students to onsell their goods. They believe the global economic recession will increase the economic motivation for people to attempt monetary gain via selling counterfeit goods.

``We undertook a sting operation late last year which netted 75 sellers of suspected counterfeit goods, the majority of whom were foreign students,’’ said Mike O’Donnell, Trade Me’s head of commercial. ``We disabled these memberships and laid a complaint with the Commerce Commission in hope of initiating prosecution under the Fair Trading Act.’’

Trade Me believes there needs to be greater co-operation between government agencies to deliver an integrated approach to counterfeit detection and prosecution; particularly Customs, Police, IRD, Immigration and Commerce. The company also believes phishing will grow in volume and specialisation.

``It’s estimated that there are around 8 million daily phishing attempts worldwide, a mind boggling figure.’’

Phishing is a term that comes from the idea that hackers try to ``fish’’ for consumers' personal and financial information via email. While less than 2% of targeted victims take the bait the results can be expensive.

``Over the last year we have seen the clumsy mass phishing attempts increasingly replaced by highly targeted spear-phishing attempts where small groups of people with specialised interests are targeted. We think this trend will increase in 2009.’’

ENDS

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