As part of the fight against phishing scams, ING Direct Bank took the decision to offer a free anti-phishing application which should protect consumers of dangerous scams. The application is called Rapport and is developed by Trusteer, "a privately held corporation founded by senior Internet security industry executives."

The security program is only compatible with Windows operating systems and can be installed and used by any users because it does not require configuration or computer restart. Only Windows XP and Windows Vista are supported for the time being, while the compatible browsers are Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and Firefox 2.

Trusteer Rapport is able to block several types of attacks, including phishing, pharming and session hijacking, it is mentioned on the ING Direct website. Moreover, the application "offers stronger security at participating banking, brokerage and retail website."

In the recent period, the number of phishing scams has grown a lot and what's worse is that people still fall victims to such attacks. However, authorities from all over the world aren't indifferent to these reports and, together with security companies, they struggle to stop the phenomenon and arrest the attackers.

For instance, yesterday, the US and the Romanian authorities arrested no less than 38 people suspected of illegal activities, including spamming and phishing. The 38 men coming from several countries set an international crime ring which stole financial information and siphoned large sums of money using fake credit cards based on the details they nipped.