s e-mail phishing scams become more frequent and "so-phish-ticated," the financial services industry, analysts, the media and consumers are taking notice. E-mail phishing scams are "one of the most urgent threats to online financial services," said research and consulting firm TowerGroup.

The company also said, in its recent report titled, "A Phish Tale? Moving From Hype to Reality," that surprisingly, only a very small number of consumers fall victim to these types of attacks, and overall, it expects direct fraud losses from phishing to total only $137.1 million globally in 2004.

The concern arises from the possibility of consumers losing their confidence in e-commerce. In response, WholeSecurity, a provider of security solutions, introduced the Phish Report Network (www.phishreport.net), which allows any company victimized in a phishing scam to report fraudulent Web sites to a central database operated by WholeSecurity.

When fraudsters phish for account and personal information in an e-mail, they pose as banks and other companies, hoping that their e-mails, decorated with colorful corporate logos, will fool unsuspecting people. The e-mails read something like this:

"Dear customer of XYZ Bank, In order to safeguard your account, please confirm your account information. To do this, click on the link below. This is mandatory, and if you don't complete our request we will suspend your account..."

Initial participants in WholeSecurity's service include Microsoft Corp., eBay and its subsidiary PayPal, and Visa.

These companies and others that use the service, enter confirmed phishing URLs into the database, and recipients such as Microsoft and Internet service providers (ISPs) use the information (aggregated into lists) to incorporate into software, e-mail and browser services to help protect consumers against online fraud.

WholeSecurity has opened the Phish Report Network to almost any company affected by phishing sites or that can help protect consumers; however, they must meet qualification criteria and adherence to program standards.