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Social Security Administration Cries Wolf Over Phishing Scam

Posted on Nov 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala

Today the Social Security Administration issued a press release warning about an email scam.

While this is certainly serious, what struck me was their apparent cluelessness about phishing scams. The term phishing doesn't appear anywhere in the press release even though it's a mainstream occurance. News flash: there are estimated to be over 7 MILLION phishing emails sent EVERY DAY.

Even the quote from the SSA commissioner is quaint. “I am outraged that someone would target an unsuspecting public in this manner,” said Commissioner Barnhart. “I have asked the Inspector General to use all the resources at his command to find and prosecute whoever is perpetrating this fraud.” I don't want to seem flip, but she's reacting as if this is the first phishing scam the world has ever seen.

Er, Commissioner Barnhart, if this is coming from outside the U.S. (which is likely) you can forget about finding and prosecuting the perpetrators. All the outrage in the world isn't going to stop a group in, say, Eastern Europe from getting away with this. First, they are probably masking their network addresses and hoping between different ISP's in different countries. The trail to find them is thin at best. Second, the resources needed to even attempt to catch the criminals would be dozens of people and millions of dollars. Third, you'd have to coordinate with multiple US law enforcement agencies, convincing them to push aside other priorities like, oh, terrorism and THEN get the cooperation of law enforcement in multiple other countries. Fat chance. Sorry for the cynicism.