NCA Throws Light on Scam Issues

As per a latest research by National Consumer Agency (NCA), majority of the Irish people have been attacked by cyber hackers and cases of online hacking are increasing at a fast pace.

The agency stated that, it had noticed a growth in the number of e-mails pretending to have come from Irish banks and the Revenue Commissioners. It is a signal that the hackers had become more sophisticated.

The research discovered that 61% of people had been contacted by cyber hackers with almost one third of those attacked confessing that they had got in contact with the scam artists with an objective of participating.

As per the data by NCA, majority of the scams takes place via e-mails. Furthermore, most of the scams are local with hackers claiming to be from the Revenue Commission or Irish banks. It has been noticed that, the people aged around 35-54 are mainly targeted in these kind of cyber attacks.

The data also claimed that those least confident in their ability are under the age group of 24 and over the age group of 65. The survey informed that people in the age group of 16-24 are most probable to reply to a scam e-mail with almost 22% responding rate.

Besides, NCA has published some of the popular scams. The work from home scam e-mails carrying the subject line "you can sell products from home, but you need to buy the stock in advance" is also the part of the research.

Further, NCA provided information on the computer virus scam- leading phishing via e-mails, stating "we're from Microsoft and you need to download this software", which provides access to monetary and other data.

Besides, the research includes the foreign lottery scam, which was the most common scam with around one of three consumers being attacked. Other common scams recognized in the research were phishing scams that attempts at gathering private data.

The Chief Executive of NCA, Ann Fitzgerald, stated that, they think that hackers have become more sophisticated in conning consumers for their money and identity. She added that it is more crucial for the consumers to be more aware than that of hackers. It is easy for the consumers to get carried away by the spam e-mails, so one has to be very careful, as reported by JOE on April 01, 2011.

Related article: NZ Researcher Uncovers Hacking Techniques Against Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 4/12/2011