What is Phishing and why is it a problem?
Phishing (fish'ing) is the act of sending a fraudulent email to someone, falsely claiming to be an established and often trusted business or institution in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. In most cases the email directs the recipient to visit a website where they are asked to update personal information, such as username and password, credit card, social security, and bank account numbers. The website, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the victim's information.
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The graph above represents the alarming growth trend of phishing emails based on Netriplex real-time global network statistics.
Phishing in the news
| Chinese bank - new home to phishing scamsters | 03/13/2006 | Criminals appear to be using a Chinese bank's server to host phishing sites to steal personal data from customers of eBay and a major US bank. That's according to Internet services company Netcraft, who claim that it's the first time that one bank's infrastructure has been used to exploit another bank.
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| Hacked bank server hosts phishing sites | 03/13/2006 | Criminals appear to have hacked a Chinese bank's server and are using it to host phishing sites to steal personal data from customers of eBay Inc. and a major U.S. bank., according to Internet services company Netcraft Ltd.
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| Phishing scams aim to bilk smaller prey | 03/12/2006 | A surge in phishing e-mail scams targeting regional credit unions and local banks is the latest sign fraudsters are shifting to narrow attacks. Smaller is better, security experts say, because the scams escape the attention of law enforcement and because a smaller company's cyberdefenses often aren't as imposing as those of a major corporation.
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