A Taiwanese teenager has been arrested for phishing, but don’t expect it to bring an end to the problem.
The China Post today reported that the 16-year old, surnamed Wu, who was studying at a south Taiwan junior college, has been charged with forgery and fraud. The paper says it’s Taiwan’s first phishing case: If convicted, he faces three to five years’ jail.
That said, it doesn’t sound like the guy is exactly the mastermind behind the Internet’s fastest growing crime: The paper quoted an officer as saying that all the boy wanted was “to appear smart. He studied a hacking manual and tried to show off his knowledge by ‘phishing’ a dozen (computer) users.” All he managed to phish were their addresses and information. The paper reported his family was not particularly proud of his alleged phishing activities:
His irate father, who knows nothing about hacking, berated and tried to beat up the boy, when arresting police officers confronted them. The youth begged for mercy, one police officer said. “He was scared to death, when he saw us,” the officer said, “and we had a hard time calming his father down.”