FTC plans anti-phishing roundtable

The discussion is scheduled for April 1 at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Open to the public, the event will provide an opportunity for experts from business, government, technology, academia and the financial industry, as well as the media, to generate ideas on how to best educate the public about phishing and decreasing risky online behaviour.

“We want to figure out how to best educate consumers on this important issue,” Rosario Mendez of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection told SCMagazineUS.com on Tuesday.

Dave Javens, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), applauded the FTC's efforts to heighten awareness of phishing schemes.

“Education in this area has been lacking,” Javens said.

The FTC, he added, already has useful information available on its website, and this roundtable is a good next step to enhance that information.

Representatives from the nonprofit APWG will be attending the roundtable to discuss some of their own plans to stem the phishing epidemic.

“When ISPs [internet service providers] take down a phishing site, we'd like them to redirect users to a site that explains what the phishing site was and how the user can protect himself from scams in the future," he said.

Such information is the goal of the event, Mendez said.

“We want to come out of the roundtable with an action plan,” she said. “We want to go beyond PR and get the message about phishing to the people.”

In December, analyst firm Gartner reported that victims of phishing scams lost US$3.2 billion over a 12-month period, ending last August.

For more information on the discussion or to attend, contact Mendez at rmendez@ftc.gov or visit www.ftc.gov.

See original article on scmagazineus.com