Phishing attacks on the rise

The number of phishing incidents rose by 8,000 per cent between January 2005 and September 2006, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has heard.

However, the rise in the number of attacks represents a victory of sorts, according to the UK payments association, Apacs. The number of phishing emails that actually succeed in conning recipients into giving away their bank and credit card details is much lower, therefore the phishing gangs have to send more in order to find people to dupe.

"It is... an indication of the banks success in combating phishing as the less successful phishing emails are, the more need to be sent out," Colin Whittaker, head of security at Apacs told the committee.

Whittaker also outlined the size of the problem. "Phishing accounts for anywhere between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of the attacks that we see that cause losses on customer’s accounts," he said.

However, when pushed by the Lords to name the banks that perform worst in dealing with phishing attacks, Apacs was reluctant to point the finger.

"Trying to draw any judgement that this bank is stronger or weaker than another bank doesn’t help us describe why that bank is being attacked in the first place,” said Whittaker.

Apacs also pointed out that all banks currently do refund victims of online fraud and publish guarantees of this on their websites.

http://www.apacs.org.uk/
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/

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