Tech Shout!

On Tuesday America Online said that it had filed charges this week against three identity theft gangs, seeking combined damages of $18 million and using a new law against the alleged “phishers.”

AOL said that it had filed three civil suits in Alexandria’s U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, charging phishing gangs with deceiving its members with counterfeit websites of legal companies to trick them into surrendering personal information.

The online division of Time Warner Inc. filed the suits under Virginia’s new anti-phishing act, the Federal Lanham Act, a trademark law, and the Federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, an anti-spam, or junk mail law.

The company said they were the first suits filed by an Internet service provider under the Virginia law passed in July 2005.

AOL is targeting gangs that they believe reside in the U.S., Germany and Romania that created “hundreds and hundreds of Web sites to mislead consumers.” AOL also said it has stored “tens of thousands” of phish e-mails sent by these gangs.

Phishers try to fool surfers by directing them to fake Web sites, which seek personal information such as address and credit card numbers.

According to data furnished by AOL, one industry association, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, found almost 50,000 phishing sites created in 2005, with more than 7,000 in December alone.