FraudEliminator, a security software startup, announced today the first product to provide comprehensive protection to home Internet users from online fraud schemes known as "phishing" attacks. Phishing is a tactic used by criminals to mimic emails and websites from trusted institutions in order to trick average Internet users into revealing valuable personal information such as bank account and credit card numbers. Phishing attacks have been grown at an alarming rate - it is estimated that over 57 million people have been victimized by phishing attacks in the last year alone.
FraudEliminator offers a free-of-charge, advertising-free browser toolbar to help protect users by automatically finding and blocking online fraud. In addition, FraudEliminator gives users an opportunity to fight back against online fraud by letting them report fraud incidents back to FraudEliminator's central database. The product also includes other popular toolbar functions such as integrated search capabilities and user-configurable popup protection, and will even identify which country a website is hosted in.
"Until now, users who were concerned about phishing have only been offered difficult-to-understand advice like 'stop clicking on links in emails' or 'inspect the address bar of every web page you visit'," said Jeffrey Hellman, president of FraudEliminator. "We developed FraudEliminator because we believe average Internet users need a simple-to-use, free-of-charge tool that finds and blocks fraud on their behalf. FraudEliminator is the first step toward making the web a worry-free place again."
How FraudEliminator Works
FraudEliminator maintains a real-time threat database that tracks identifying information about every known online fraud threat. To keep the database up to date, FraudEliminator has built a network of fraud incident collection points. In addition, users are encouraged to report fraud incidents to our central fraud monitoring center. Every fraud incident is reviewed by our fraud analysts to ensure the integrity of the database. Adding yet another layer of protection, FraudEliminator has also developed a proprietary set of statistical algorithms designed to recognize signs of fraud. For example, a fraudulent website claiming to be your bank or financial contact that is actually based in Moldova or another unusual location, or has other telltale signs of phishing sites, will be blocked as fraud. This happens as soon as you click on the website, and that site is then added to the FraudEliminator database and other users are protected from viewing it as well. This is done in conjunction with FraudEliminator staff going out and identifying dangerous fraud sites.
FraudEliminator requires a Windows-compatible PC running Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 or XP, and Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.
About FraudEliminator LLC
FraudEliminator, headquartered, in Santa Clara, Calif., was established to make the Internet a safer place for average Internet users. FraudEliminator's toolbar is free of charge and does not include any pop up ads, spyware, adware, or any other form of advertising. In the future, FraudEliminator, LLC will offer premium versions of its software that users will have the option of purchasing; however, the basic fraud prevention toolbar will always remain free. For additional information about the company please visit www.fraudeliminator.com.