Email fraudsters are to be hit by the development of new software for brokers of stocks and shares.
Investors are to gain increased protection from unscrupulous share dealers running "pump and dump" scams, the BBC reports.
Recent developments in anti-fraud network software have led to new products for brokers coming on the market which spot unusual trading patterns - therefore catching out the con artists. Pump and dump works through misrepresenting the earnings potential of certain stocks: customers are told that a set of shares will rise dramatically in value.
This then leads to small investors purchasing the stocks, resulting in the predicted rise and giving the fraudsters the opportunity to sell their own pre-existing holdings on at a profit.
Potential customers for the scams have grown enormously with the advent of the internet, and, particularly, email. Indeed, it is now estimated that around 15 percent of total junk emails are related to pump and dump.
However, tech firms are now fighting back. Peter Tancredi at Verisign, which has its own anti pump and dump software for brokers on the market, told the broadcaster that the scams will be significantly damaged by these developments.
"What this self-learning behavioural engine does is look at the different attributes of the event, not necessarily about the computer or where you are logging on from but about the actual transaction, the trade, the amount of the trade," he explained.
"For example…when a customer who normally trades tech stock on Nasdaq all of a sudden trades a penny stock that has to do with health care and is placing a trade four times more than normal."
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