The Japanese police have arrested a 26-year-old man on suspicion of illicitly obtaining credit card information of shoppers at a music group's website by deploying malicious code. They say this marks the first nationwide arrest related to web skimming.

The police in the western prefecture of Kyoto arrested Okuma Sho, an unemployed resident of Soka City, Saitama Prefecture.

They suspect he injected a program into the official site of a music group between October and November last year and obtained credit card numbers of three people who had made purchases on the site.

The arrest came after the police found more than 100 posts containing what they believed to be illegally obtained credit card information on an online bulletin board.

The police say the suspect has admitted to the allegations, confessing that he installed a malicious program on the site out of curiosity, which led to the theft of card information.

They are investigating how he used the illegally obtained information.

This follows Okuma's indictment for sending a bomb threat to universities in Tokyo and using illicitly acquired credit card information for shopping.

The Japanese police are urging people to be aware of web skimming. Unlike phishing scams in which credit card numbers are stolen through fake websites, web skimming occurs on legitimate websites and is often undetected by their administrators.

The police say website administrators need to take adequate security measures to prevent the installation of malicious programs.

They are also urging people to frequently check their credit card statements and to request notifications from their card companies for any usage.