Phishers Pocket $2.8 Billion From Unsuspecting Consumers

According to Gregg Keizer from TechWeb News phishing scams are reeling in the big bucks. A survey by analyst Avivah Litan published Thursday by the research firm Gartner shows phishing consumer losses jumped up fivefold from last year, (12 months ending Aug.30) that’s $2.8 Billion (yes, that’s a B).

Litan’s research also indicates:

• Almost twice as many Americans admitted that they’d received a phishing e-mail in 2006 as did in 2004
• 109 million consumers seeing an attack in 2006, compared to 79 million in 2005 and just 57 million in 2004.
• It was presumptuous of us to think that phishing would be solved
• In 2006, the percentage of those who said they’d received a phish and clicked on the link was nearly 25 percent. In 2005, the number was only 15 percent.
• Although online fraud went down by 24 percent, the average loss skyrocketed from $257 in 2005 to $1,244 in 2006
• The recovery rate has gone from 80 percent of the loss to just 64 percent
• In 2005 the average victim lost $51 and in 2006 that jumped to $572
• A year ago, the average lifespan of a phishing site was a week, now it’s close to an hour

“Most anti-phishing toolbars are largely based on blacklisting [known phishing sites]. You can’t blacklist an IP address that changes every hour”, said Litan. Some of the most common losses did not come from the big banks, better security has seemed to help slow their bleeding. Many losses are coming from sweepstakes & lottery offers, fake auctions and PayPal attacks.

While just a few posts back we were recommending the new IE anti phishing addition, Litan’s research already indicates that anti-phishing features in the newest browsers, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, for example, are obsolete by the time they’re introduced. The criminals seem to always be a step, or more, ahead.

“By the time that IE 7 came out, it was too late to be much help.” :-(