Britain makes a first 'phishing' arrest

A 21-year-old man is accused of trying to steal the banking details of customers at U.K. Internet bank Smile, authorities said Thursday. During the past year, crafty programmers have been honing phishing scams by creating bogus e-mails and increasingly realistic Web sites where they try to con Internet customers out of their bank details or credit card numbers. "It is believed this man was a copy-cat phisher and is not connected to the organized crime group that is behind the global swathe of phishing scams targeting bank users in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.A.," the United Kingdom's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) said in a statement. The NHTCU said officials from the Co-Operative Bank, who operate www.smile.co.uk, reported the scam last month to police.

A Smile spokesman said a "handful" of the bank's 500,000-plus customers supplied their details to the bogus site. "My understanding is nobody has lost any money," he added.

Some of the largest retail banks in the world, including Barclays, Lloyds TSB and NatWest, have been hit by the scam over the past year. Another favored target is auctioneer eBay's online payment service, PayPal.

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