You've probably seen one in your Inbox—an email that claims to be from your bank and asks you to confirm your account information. It certainly looks legitimate—using your bank's colors, fonts, and logos. It may even alarm you by stating that your information has been compromised. The Bank of New Toledo, for example, has suffered a "system flush" (there's no such thing) and needs to make sure that the information they have for you is accurate.

This is a "phisher" email—one that goes fishing for information to get into your financial accounts or commit unauthorized transactions. The form that you're asked to fill out could steal your name, address, Social Security number, and credit card number. This is identity theft—the fraudulent use of your identity by somebody else—and the Internet is a recent, but powerful tool in the identity thief's arsenal.

At EarthLink, we take identity theft seriously. We were the first major Internet service provider to offer free phisher scam protection, and we think it's still the best. EarthLink's ScamBlocker is available to members as part of our TotalAccess® 2005 software. And all Internet users may download ScamBlocker with our free EarthLink Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. ScamBlocker works with your Web browser to automatically protect you from scams and from criminals who try to steal your personal information and identity.

EarthLink's fraud team works daily with law enforcement to track down and stop Internet crime. This dedicated group proactively monitors EarthLink systems for new fraud threats. When a new fraudulent Web site is discovered, we block it using ScamBlocker, inform the host of the site that it needs to be shut down, and notify the authorities.

Find out more about identity theft on this site and learn how you can take steps to protect yourself online.