Abbey Tops the List of Phishing Targets

ClearMyMail, the company for spam prevention, recently released a report that revealed that over the first three months of 2008, Abbey in the United Kingdom was targeted in phishing attacks at the rate of 32.99%. FinancialAdvice published this in news on May 21, 2008.

Phishing are attacks that involve third parties who trick Internet users and illegally make them download spyware as well as provide data on false Websites. The stolen data is subsequently used to withdraw funds from bank accounts, create counterfeit credit cards, etc. ClearMyMail further revealed that during January-March 2008, 8,156 e-mails were caught and blocked, per consumer.

The only guaranteed company of the UK against spam, ClearMyMail has shown that while Abbey was the most attacked company, Citibank came in second, suffering 19.15% of the phishing attacks. Citibank is the proprietor of Egg, the UK-based Internet bank that provides customer services to access their accounts online. The remaining targets in the list of top ten were NatWest, Halifax, PayPal, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, RBS, Nationwide and MBNA.

Meanwhile, research on e-mail indicated that a huge 96% of the entire e-mail that passed through the ClearMyMail spam filtering system via the Orange ISP were either virus related or spam. Segregation of these messages showed Abbey as the main target of phishing attacks. Consumers who selected Orange as their preferred ISP received the maximum number of spam. It was also found that the US was still the key source of phishing e-mails to the UK.

Managing Director and CEO, Dan Field, for ClearMyMail said that the statistics caused concern and since only 4% of the e-mails through ISPs were genuine, it suggested the need for immediate action to address the problem. Webuser reported this on May 21, 2008.

According to the security company, all Internet users must be very careful with the e-mails they receive. If a bank is not found in the top-ten chart, it does not necessarily mean that scammers were leaving it free from their attacks. While Abbey now topped the list, finding e-mails to Halifax increasing ten times over Q4 2007-Q1 2008 explained everything, said the company.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/2/2008