December 14, 2006

Phishing scams up 8000% - FSA

by Brian Turner

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Security

A report by the FSA to the government states phishing scams have increased over 8000%.

The figures relate to phishing scams recorded between January and June for 2005 and 2006 - which were tallied as 312 and 5,059.

However, while the banking trade body Apacs has tried to put the increase down the increased detection, the likelihood is that we really are seeing a much bigger volume - as many internet users could attest.

The figures also only cover reported phishing emails - but many phishing attacks are never reported.

The FSA also refused to name the most common targets - which are almost certainly Paypal, followed second by eBay.

A combination of US and UK banks are also frequently targeted.

Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 recently introduced anti-phishing features to help surfers, with the Firefox version being particularly effective at drawing user attention to potential phishing sites.

IE7, on the other hand, frequently pulls up false positives on websites using shared security certificates - something webmasters will notice whenever they try to login to website admin panels such as CPanel.

Overall, the FSA report makes one thing clear - phishing is a recognised industry that is not going away anytime soon.

However, the increased vigilance of online service provides and anti-phishing tools means that internet users are increasingly better protected.

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Story link: Phishing scams up 8000% - FSA

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