Netscape Australia and a West-Australian ISP that asked to remain anonymous have been the subject of an attempted e-mail fraud throughout the end of July and the beginning of August this year.
A representative of the target ISP said it was similar to a racket tried on the Yahoo! mail service.
The perpetrators attempted to sell a new Netscape product called Netscape Netcentre that reportedly enabled the Communicator browser to run faster and simplified online communication.
While the e-mail suggested a price for this software, it was offered to
registered ISP users for free. The e-mail then asked users to supply their
current username and password if they wished to take advantage of this
offer.
The perpetrators apparently acquired an e-mail list of current users to enact the scheme. They further used a ‘netscape.net’ address from
Netscape’s new Webmail service to create the illusion that the e-mail was official.
While no charges have yet been made, Netscape management is investigating the case.