(TheConservativeTimes.org) – A giant fraud website that has been operational, giving hackers the ability to trick people into handing over personal information like passwords and email addresses, has just been shut down by police.
Britain’s Metropolitan Police said that the website was called LabHost and it was used by two thousand criminals who intended to steal people’s personal data. As of now, the police have identified at least seventy thousand individuals who have been victims of this fraud and thirty-seven people have been arrested in connection.
Police left a message on the website that says that law enforcement has seized the website and they are now in control of it. They have also contacted thousands of people to tell them that their information has been compromised.
LabHost had over four hundred thousand credit card numbers, over sixty thousand PIN codes, and more than one million passwords according to the police.
LabHost was set up a couple of years ago by a cybernetwork that sought out victims to scam them out of identifying information like bank details and important passwords. The main way that they do this is by making fake websites that will allow them to get this information. These criminals often created websites that just looked real or imitated popular websites like bank sites or healthcare providers.
“Online fraudsters think they can act with impunity.” says Dame Lynne Owens, who was involved in the operation as the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. She continued, “They believe they can hide behind digital identities and platforms such as LabHost and have absolute confidence these sites are impenetrable by policing.”
Many private companies banded together to help bring down LabHost, and Owens said that this showed “how law enforcement worldwide can, and will, come together with one another and private sector partners to dismantle international fraud networks at source.”
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