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Fraudulent donation Web page is purged
Friday, February 4, 2000
By LISA STIFFLER
A fraudulent Web page soliciting donations for the families of the victims of the Alaska Airlines flight 261 crash has been closed.
Airline employees were shocked.
"We just couldn't understand. It was unimaginable someone would do something like that," said airline spokesman Brian Petro.
There's no organization that regulates online content; it is at the discretion of individual internet service providers to pull unlawful pages from the Web. Many tell subscribers they must obey local and national laws or lose their service.
After examination of the Web page's code and discovery of the danger posed by the operation, the airline contacted the provider Wednesday and asked that the page be removed. Freehomepages.com, a Costa Rica-based company, yanked the site yesterday morning.
It's not known how many people fell prey to the fraud. Freehomepages.com could not be reached for comment.
Petro said a second scam site that asked for Social Security numbers of Alaska employees under the guise of donating to co-workers was purged.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
An e-mail sent to the airline Tuesday evening tipped them off to the site, which used the company's logo and masqueraded as an official page. Visitors who downloaded the contribution form would unleash a virus that allowed outside access to information on their computer.
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