Cyber Crimes are on a rise, the year 2004 was referred to as “Year of the Cyber-Crime Pandemic” by Eweek.com. With the progress in technology, Cyber Criminals are evolving new techniques and innovative ways to commit crimes. The latest being 'Phishing', which includes 'Email Spoofing', the purpose of which is either to steal the money or identity theft.

One of the form of 'Phishing' is 'Email Spoofing', where an email received appears to be sent by a famous company like, PayPal, Ebay, etc or some Bank, where you may be having an account... and the said email asks the recipient to verify details on a web page, which looks like company’s web-page, as the web-address shows IP address only, where the site is hosted and the webpage uses exactly the same graphics, as the original site.

Sensitive information like Credit Card no, Bank account info, etc, is asked to be filled up on the said web page, the purpose being to steal away the sensitive information. And later, information is used to commit frauds like transferring funds from a bank account, using of Credit Card number to make online purchases, etc.

Such emails are becoming very common these days and 'Phishing' is turning out to be the most harmful crime. Companies suggest that never give out any information over the email, as no company ever asks for such information through E-mail. In case, you by mistae enter any password to login into such account on a hoax site, you need to immediately change the password and take necessary precautions as regards the other Sensitive information.

And it is always better to report the matter to the respective companies, who will provide you with detailed guidelines as to how to deal with the situation and they also carry out their own investigations and take legal actions against such persons. Mostly a link is provided on the websites to report such case. Like to report such matter to Ebay.in - send an email to ' '

You can also report matter to the Anti-Phishing Working Group at http://www.antiphishing.org

As regards the legal status, current Indian IT Act, does not contain any provision for this Cyber Crime may be beacuse IT Act was enacted in Year 2000 and the year 2003 saw the proliferation of a phishing scam.