| Users losing money via online surge 600 times |
| Last Updated(Beijing Time):2006-12-21 11:19 |
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The number of users who lost money from online bank accounts in the first 10 months of the year surged dramatically by 600 times in China over the figure in 2004, a Beijing-based anti-virus service provider said yesterday.
From January to October, about 37,000 people lost money when they used online banking services. In 2005, 1,100 users lost money from their online accounts while only 60 users were victims in 2004, according to Beijing Jiangmin New Science & Technology Co, a major technical support firm under the state-level National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center.
The real figure must be higher than that as many people report to the police directly instead of the Internet service hotline, the center said.
"Domestic banks often adopt 'account and password' method for users to log in to online accounts. It is too simple to bring much risk," said Cao Lingxiang, Jiangmin's spokesperson.
Online bank users face threats from hackers breaking into banks' servers, Trojan programs that record people's keyboard usage and phishing which duplicate customer service e-mails and bank Websites to entice users to disclose their passwords, experts said.
In the first six months, 865 phishing messages were detected online daily on average, according to Symantec Corp, a US-based Internet security firm.
One reason for the spectacular jump in the number of online users losing money from their online accounts is the booming online shopping and auction sector in China, which saw transactions jump more than 100 percent annually.
The value of online transactions in China is likely to hit 89 trillion yuan this year and 193 trillion yuan in 2010, said research firm iResearch Inc.
Meanwhile, there have been cases of online bank cheating and breaches of password recently, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was one of the parties involved.
More than 200 ICBC customers have claimed that money had been stolen from their accounts via phishing. They plan to sue the country's No. 1 bank.
"If the money loss is due to our system, the number of victims would be more than 200 taking into account ICBC's huge client base of 20 million," the bank said in a statement, while adding that it is not responsible for the alleged cases.
Jiangmin is talking with banks to provide users with a low-cost password protection tool, probably less than five yuan each, to improve security, according to Cao. |
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