Two widely reported Web stories this year have been related to online-services fraud. One concerns online banking, the other account-hacking on a smartphone messenger service.

If you use the online services of Japanese banks, you may have noticed that their websites have become decorated with more and more vivid red and yellow cautions. One I've seen even features a nostalgic horizontally scrolling marquee and blinking text, taking me back to the 1990s. These warnings are intended to remind users to check that the site they are using is genuine — though, amusingly, the out-of-date banners themselves make the sites look rather fishy.

The methods of the real fraudsters are nothing new. They make a site copying that of the online bank, send emails randomly to millions of addresses and wait for someone stupid enough to click the link to the fake site and enter their username and password. These can then be used by the charlatans to access the real account and transfer the victim's money elsewhere.