Britons Deceived With Around 420,000 Phishing E-Mails Per Hour

One Briton every 7 seconds becomes target of cyber-attack, as UK computer-users, every hour receive over 420,000 scam e-mails, according to a study, which CPP, an identity fraud prevention company, conducted recently.

Reports CPP that during 2009, Britons received a remarkable 3.7 Billion phishing e-mails.

The scam messages commonly come from cyber-criminals who pretend to be the online service of leading financial institutions, such as banks. They typically deceive victims into visiting a fake website and divulging their passwords and account numbers.

Together with these bank phishing e-mails, more than 50% Britons got bogus competition prize or lottery scam e-mails, whilst another 50% became targets of off-shore based scammers like those belonging to Nigerian gangs.

Indeed, CPP indicated that 25% of UK inhabitants acknowledged of being victimized by e-fraud, whereby an ordinary victim lost more than £285.

Remarking about these results, Identity Fraud Expert Nicole Sanders at CPP stated that the worrying issue was that consumers continued to become victims. Scammers were getting ever-more proficient. And recognizing an authentic e-mail from one that's designed to scam could be very hard, the fraud expert added. Express.co.uk published this on June 16, 2010.

In addition to phishing e-mails, fraudsters also appear to be abusing existing defaults within the privacy settings of people's computers.

Further, CPP reports that almost one-fifth of Britons got fake Facebook messages supposedly from family and friends. Additionally, Internet banking fraud became more than twice from 2009, with 46% Brits fearing that criminals could utilize their card information online.

Contemplating over these discoveries, a reformed PC hacker Robert Schifreen suggests that one can easily remain safe online by adopting certain fundamental precautions. Thesun.co.uk published this on June 15, 2010. Schifreen said that one shouldn't ever enter his password, payment card number, or other sensitive details into an site except if its URL has an 'https' in the prefix and his Web-browser shows the 'locked padlock' icon.

Also, a user must ensure that his anti-virus program is up-to-date and that his PC was set to automatically takedown security applications from the Net, the expert added.

Related article: Britons Resist to Go Online for Fear of Cybercrime

» SPAMfighter News - 6/25/2010