Phishing up 180 percent in six months

Davey Winder
Saturday, 26 July 2008 19:01

Business IT - Security

According to APACS, the UK payments association, the number of people banking online has risen by 505 percent in the last seven years. However, in just the last six months alone the number of reported phishing incidents has risen by 180 percent in the UK.

In the year 2000 just 3.5 million people were using online banking according to APACS figures released this week. That number has jumped to more than 21 million last year, a rise of some 505 percent.

Although the chances of becoming a victim of banking fraud are very low, APACS reckons that there has been a year-on-year drop of 33 percent in online banking fraud losses (down to UKP £22.6 million AUD $46.9 million) from 2006 to 2007 for example, criminals are continuing to target customers with phishing and spyware scams.

This, APACS concludes, is largely because the banks own systems have proved extremely difficult for the criminals to attack successfully.

"Online banking has changed the way we access our bank accounts, and is now second nature to many of us" says Sandra Quinn, Director of Communications at APACS. "In the future we expect more and more people to use online banking to make payments rather than just checking balances" she adds, warning "we strongly urge banking customers to make sure they remain wary of online scams such as unsolicited emails claiming to be from their bank, and to only use a fully protected PC with regularly updated anti-virus software and a firewall installed and switched on."

APACS has published a Banking Safely Online advice guide to help remind online banking customers of the need to stay vigilant and follow simple safety procedures when banking online.

Greg Day is an analyst at one of the largest security vendors, McAfee, and has been looking at exactly why there has been such a large jump in the number of phishing attempts so far this year.

How do reuse, awareness and growth figure in the cybercriminal phishing strategy? Read on to find out...

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