Insulating Skilled Phishers

Read a story this morning about the supposed shrinking (and presumably non-renewable?) resource of phishable dollars this morning, aka, the Tragedy of the Phishing Commons. Just a thought I had while reading it. Phishing is stupendously easy, so the field will attract lots of stupid entry-level phishers. While this is a detriment to the professionals (someone phished by a dumb phisher may be less likely to be phished later by a smart one), it seems this field of less-skilled phishers are more likely to get caught, which itself gives two benefits to the smart criminals.

First, law enforcement has finite resources and are almost always driven by bust statistics, so if they hit their quota of easy targets, the hard targets will remain in the field longer.

Second, while the professional phishers stay in the game longer, they will get better at it. At the same time, the law enforcement types, through their success at busting dumb phishers, will get better at busting the same kind of dumb phisher over and over again, further insulating pro phishers.

So, phishing can be seen in the same light as, say, drug dealing -- cops will tend to spend most of their time taking the least skilled players off the street, while the kingpin types remain to operate relatively unimpeded.

All speculation, of course, but I watched The Wire, so I'm confident in my ability to comment intelligently on police procedure. :)