Online accounts face massive rise in 'phishing' scams

Gangs of fraudsters operating from Russia and eastern Europe are stealing hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from online banks by exploiting gullible and greedy British account holders.

The number of so-called phishing scams is increasing sharply, according to new figures compiled by a leading British email security company, MessageLabs, which monitors the bursts of baited messages sent out to internet users.

Last September it intercepted 279 suspect emails; in January it stopped 337,350 phishing-related messages.

The scale of the problem is so large that high street banks have reversed their policy of denying there is a threat to online accounts.

Instead, they are broadcasting warnings about the dangers in an attempt to prevent others falling prey to similar tricks which may undermine consumers' confidence in the security of online banking.

Phishing - the term derives from the way computer thieves go fishing for private data on the internet - involves the use of junk emails sent out randomly to lure unsuspecting victims to bogus websites where they are fooled into typing in their account details and passwords as a security precaution.

The fraudsters then access the victims' accounts and transfer money into the accounts of British mules, who withdraw the cash and wire it out of the country to the gangs in return for a cut of about 5%.

The survey by MessageLabs, which scans 45m emails a day for 8,500 business customers worldwide, found an extraordinarily high level of phishing emails in circulation. The number intercepted in March dipped only slightly to 215,643.

Combatting the fraud has become a priority for the police's national hi-tech crime unit. Several teams of detectives are investigating but no one has been charged here or abroad.

"This is one of our main investigations at the moment," said a spokeswomen for the unit.

"We are working with the banks to track down the people behind it all. We think there's more than one group."

She added: "The main criminals are operating from outside Britain, in a number of eastern European countries."

The Association for Payment Clearing Services (Apacs), which coordinates electronic payment systems for all banks, admitted that by now the banks had probably lost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"The amount of money that has been stolen is less than a million," said Sandra Quinn, a spokeswoman for Apacs.

"The banks are reimbursing their customers for these losses but for individual customers it is a bit of shock when they first find cash missing," Ms Quinn said.