SBC Unresponsive to, Identity Theft, Internet Fraud, Complaints

Reports to SBC of identity theft scam go unanswered. Fraudulent web sites remain to collect personal information.

(PRWEB) November 15, 2004 -- After receiving multiple email containing what was clearly internet fraud with links leading to web pages cleverly disguised as eBay with the sole purpose of identity theft, SurfSafely.com founder Mark Brasche went to work. With software designed to trace the origin of the rogue web site Mr. Brasche quickly learned that the pages were being made available from somewhere in San Francisco by way of a DSL modem using SBC Internet Service.

This is so unbelievably brazen" said Mr. Brasche that the user is either incredibly stupid, the victim of a third party who has seized complete control of his computer without his knowledge or a government employee authorized to conduct a study of how many people he can actually dupe into forking over unreasonably sensitive information."

Regardless of the motive, Mr. Brasche has tried unsuccessfully for two days to contact SBC to have the site shut down. As a last resort Mr. Brasche contacted eBay directly then finally the San Francisco FBI to see if they could motivate SBC to shut down the offending account. SBCs unresponsiveness can only lead me to conclude that they either condone the activity, dont fully appreciate the threat it poses to Internet users or simply do not have the resources needed to address this type of Internet fraud quickly enough to prevent users from being victimized. The site was live for almost one full week. It took four days from the time I started reporting it for it to be deactivated. It should have taken four minutes." Mr. Brasche said. Readers of his monthly newsletter were warned again this month of the recent flurry of Internet scams.

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing Internet fraud crimes online. Internet service providers and web hosting companies simply must be equipped to deal with these situations quickly. If they cannot or will not, ultimately legislation will be enacted that compels them to.

About SurfSafely.com: With 76,770 active links SurfSafely.com is the single largest searchable directory of voluntarily labeled web sites in the world. Only sites labeled with the ICRA or SafeSurf labeling standards are permitted in the directory.

About Mark Brasche: Mr. Brasche is the Founder and CEO of SurfSafely.com, a respected public speaker and published author on the topic of online safety. For more information please contact Mr. Brasche directly at SurfSafely.com or by telephone 860-673-7431.

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