Security vendor F-Secure Corporation today issued a press release urging ICANN to create a .safe domain to be used by financial institutions. "While a .safe domain name won’t prevent phishing attacks, it will help banks and security providers to keep their customers safe," said F-Secure's Patrik Runald. "Banks need to take on some of the responsibility for protecting their customers and using a secure domain name such as .safe will give customers the reassurance they need when banking online."

According to APACS, the UK payments association, 17 million people now bank via the Internet in the UK and that figure is set to rise in the next few years[1]. The trend is similar in other countries. But as the number of Internet bankers rise, so does the amount of people committing fraud. Compared to the first six months of 2005, online banking fraud rose by 55 per cent in 2006

If ICANN introduced a .safe domain (or .sure or .bank), which could only be used by registered financial institutions, it would allow security providers to create better software to protect the public, according to F-Secure. It would be similar to other top level Domain Names such as .uk and .gov.

Over the last few weeks, F-Secure has been trying to persuade a Hong Kong based registrar to close down a large number of active phishing sites targeting over 20 different banks and while they responded politely to the requests, they did not actually take them down. The .safe domain would certainly help in these cases as users would know that any other domain is to be considered unsafe.

“It’s true this will mean banks have to pay a premium to be able to use the domain name, but it will reduce the number of successful phishing sites that have been tricking many customers out of their hard earned cash,” Runald continued.

“ICANN has the power to create a safer online banking world, by introducing a top level Domain Name for banks and other reliable financial institutions. The idea was mooted some time ago, but with levels of online fraud as high as they are, now is the time to take action. .safe would give the millions of online customers the reassurance they need that banking via the Internet is safe,” concluded Runald.