FTC targets Web fraud

September 22, 1999: 10:37 p.m. ET

Regulators say they have new tools to fight 'pagejacking'

WASHINGTON (CNNfn) - The Federal Trade Commission Wednesday announced the government has improved its ability to monitor and track "copycat" websites that exploit e-businesses, advertisers and unsuspecting consumers through the process of "pagejacking."
     Pagejacking is the practice of illicitly redirecting users from legitimate websites to sites containing pornography and other adult material.
     The FTC's Jodie Bernstein, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the agency has identified three suspects - one located in Portugal, and two others in Australia - who are allegedly behind the practice which at one time or another has affected millions of websites.
     Law-enforcement agencies from both nation's are cooperating with the FTC's continuing investigation, which has obtained a preliminary injunction to rid the web of the defendants' work pending a legal outcome.
     At stake is the credibility of commercial websites and their ability to secure their sites and hang on to advertisers and subscribers in cyberspace. And, there is concern about the seeming ease with which fraudulent website operators can send young viewers to adult sites regardless of filtering systems used by parents.
     The case marks the FTC's 100th action targeting Internet scams, and according to Berstein, "this may be the most pernicious we've seen."
     Attorney John Fisher, who specializes in intellectual-property law and represents a U.S. gaming website whose web page was co-opted, said it's "almost impossible" to quantify the financial harm done to burgeoning Internet businesses. However, Berstein notes of the estimated 1 billion websites worldwide, 25-million have been tampered with by the variations of the scam known as "pagejacking and mousetrapping."
     In a typical pagejacking scenario, a computer savy individual with only limited computer code writing ability, can attach an illicit site address to the address of a legimate website. Furthermore, the hacker can disable the abililty of the user to back out of or exit the web page. Bernstein said the defendants allegedly "exposed surfers, including children, to the seamiest sort of material, and incapacitated their computers so they couldn't escape."
     The FTC has promised to match the growing ingenuity of Internet scam artists, and today unveiled a computer lab, operating independently of the FTC mainframe, that will enable investigators there to monitor the net in search of fraud and abuse. The lab has been operational for six weeks, and work done there is credited with locating the pagejackers named in the FTC's complaint.