Phishing emails double

Posted by Michael Bloch in online world (Friday November 10, 2006 )

So it would appear that while people are becoming more aware of phishing scams, the sheer number, ferocity, elusiveness and losses involved with successful phishing attacks is well and truly outpacing the wariness.

Quite a frightening prediction mentioned in the report is that soon we could be seeing phishing sites set up for particular targets; i.e. a single site set up to target a single user.

Read more of my posts on phishing scams

Read more of the Gartner phishing report

Pick up some anti-hacking tips for home based online business

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Approximately 109 million U.S. adults have received phishing e-mails, up from 57 million U.S. adults in 2004 according to a Gartner survey.

While the number of incidences of actual financial losses from phishing scams has decreased over the last couple of years, the average loss per victim has grown substantially from $257 to $1,244 per victim in 2006.

Other key findings from the survey of 5,000 online adults carried out in August this year:

– Over double the number of Americans clicked on a phishing e-mail in 2006 over 2004

– 3.5 million provided sensitive information phishing scammers in 2006, up from 1.9 million adults in 2005

– More people are deleting email from persons whom they don’t know (which is something for web marketers to take note of)

– The average life of phishing sites is around one hour these days. A couple of years ago it was a week.

– High income adults are more often attacked

– Monetary recovery rates from phishing attacks in 2006 dropped to 54%. In 2005, it was 80%

– Financial losses from phishing attacks have exceeded $2.8 billion in 2006.

Quite a frightening prediction mentioned in the report is that soon we could be seeing phishing sites set up for particular targets; i.e. a single site set up to target a single user.