Comments on: EarthLink lands a win in phishing suit

EarthLink incorrectly tells its customers that a legitimate bank is a phishing Web site. But it still wins in federal court.

[zaznet]

Twisting the law

The law was written to protect the ISP from information published on the Internet by a third party. When the company decides to publish the information, it has changed hands and become their own. I think the courts have been taking a too broad interpretation of this law.

In this case the ISP provided software to it's customers as part of a service. This was not the user going to a website maintained by someone unrelated to the ISP and finding false information.

[PCCRomeo]

EarthLink should pay for damages...

But naturally they're getting away with it. To be honest though, I don't know why people use that crap that tells them if a website is a "potential threat" because anyone who knows what they're doing on the internet should be able to tell if a website is legit. I hope Firefox doesn't start putting that garbage in with their browser like Netscape did.

[Razzl]

Don't cry for the banks on this one

Before you guys get all teary-eyed for this bank, you should understand that banks are some of the worst offenders when it comes to doing nothing to protect their interests and leaving phishing victims in harm's way. The next time you get a phishing email claiming to be from a bank, go to the web site of the bank through a google search and see if you can find any contact email addresses at the bank web site where you can forward the phishing email for analysis. You won't, because they don't want to invest any effort in finding out who's ripping people off in their name. The ones I've looked up give a lot of silly advice about contacting the FBI or FTC--as though it were everyone else's job but their own to protect their business. And just what kind of email did this particular bank send out in the first place that generated the warning? Could it be that against all known good practice they asked the customer to share confidential information?...