Phishing attacks - still growing

The Register has a great write-up about phishing. The article starts by describing some fake actions taken by the allied troups to fool fascist Germany in the second World War, which is a pretty interesting comparison. However it quickly delves into the real scams and how people still STILL !!!! believe e-mails send by scammers and respond to those by revealing their account details, subsequently allowing scammers to empty their bank accounts.

In fact, they are quoting Gartner Research that nearly 2 million American consumers have been tricked. This is a huge number - there are no numbers on the impact in Asia, but I believe that we can safely multiply the number. On average, those consumers lost US$1,200 - a pretty high number indicating that the business of phishing and scamming is still thriving - the Anti-Phishing Working Group says that overall, "phishing e-mails have jumped 4,000 percent in the past six months, and just last month, Citibank overtook eBay as the most common target. The company faced an average of 16 attacks per day, and 475 separate phishing attacks during April, an increase of nearly 400 percent from March." Their webpage shows a nice graphic highlighting the not so nice facts.

Take care !!
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