Stop phishing with a new domain

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 05/08/2007 - 08:29

Here is an interesting idea that could put an end to phishing. Everyone has received those emails claiming to be from some well known bank, urging you to log in immediately to update your bank information. The URLs look like legitimate Web sites, but belong to crooks who want to capture your account information so they can empty your bank account.

This new proposal from an Internet security expert is simple and likely to work. It would create a new top level domain, .bank, that would be issued only to legitimate financial institutions and it would cost a lot of money (e.g. $50,000) to register the domain, rather than the trivial $10 that it costs a criminal now to register a phony bank site.

Banks would be likely to move quickly to the new domains, because phishing fraud is a major headache that costs them millions. And it would eliminate some of the spam in our mailboxes. Let's hope this idea gets traction quickly.