Nationwide Building Society has improved its anti-phishing technology to help shut down fake web sites faster, after becoming an increasingly regular target of phishers.

The financial services firm has formed a strategic fraud group and installed anti-phishing software from vendor MarkMonitor to respond to attacks.

‘It became extremely difficult to shut down phishing sites fast enough and cope with the number of incoming emails from customers reporting phishing attacks or suspicious-looking web sites,’ said Peter Corrie, head of Nationwide’s strategic fraud initiative.

In the past, Nationwide staff manually tracked phishing scams carried out against the company, but this is now performed automatically which means less customers become phishing victims.

Corrie says the plan is part of a campaign by the building society to tackle e-crime.

‘With online fraud increasing exponentially each year, it is paramount for firms such as ours to tackle the problem head-on to minimise revenue losses and protect our members,’ he said.

According to phishing research group the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), 90 per cent of phishing attacks carried out in December targeted financial services firms.

‘Many techniques have evolved in the criminal community to exploit online banking systems,’ said Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the APWG. ‘It is very difficult to find one solution that will make all your problems go away.’