An 8000% Increase In UK Phishing Attacks
The BBC reports that the FSA, which is the independent body that regulates the financial services industry in the U.K., told the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee that incidents of phishing are set to rise by 90% for the second year in a row.
In case you are unfamiliar with phishing Wikipedia tells us that, “In computing, phishing is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message, although phone contact has been used as well.” Microsoft tells us, “Phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other information. Con artists might send millions of fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from Web sites you trust, like your bank or credit card company, and request that you provide personal information.” This is a problem to for all readers to understand and avoid.
The S&T committee heard evidence from The Financial Services Authority (FSA), Apacs the UK Payments Association, Visa and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RSA) about policies to protect consumers from ID theft which commonly occurs using the data obtained in a phishing attack.
Last year, between January and June the number of recorded phishing incidents was just 312. This year for the same period, that number grew to 5059. Apacs reports that approximately £23.2 million of consumer’s money was stolen in these scams in just the first half of 2006 and was expected to be almost as high for the second half of the year. For you Americans, that figure totals around $87 million dollars for the year lost to fraudulent phishing attacks.
Philip Whitaker, Apacs security chief, told the committee that fraudsters were adopting an increasingly “industrialised” approach. Whitaker told the committee that phishing accounts for anywhere between 25% to 50% of the attacks that cause customer losses.
For more information on how to avoid such attacks, please see any of the following webs.
- http://www.antiphishing.org/
- http://onguardonline.gov/phishing.html
- http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/phishing.mspx
For Digital Gold Currency users, I wrote a helpful post on phishing some weeks back entitled Don’t Get Hooked By The DGC Phishing E-mails
