3.2 Billion Dollars Lost to Phishing in 2007 112
mrneutron2003 brings us FastSilicon's summary of a Gartner survey which found that 3.2 billion dollars were lost in 2007 to phishing scams. "Gartner's latest survey into the realm of phishing attacks paints a rather bleak picture for 2007, with a record estimated loss of $3.2 Billion (that's Billion, with a B) U.S. Dollars. Overall loss per incident fell (to $886 from $1,244 lost on average in 2006) but the numbers of individuals who fell victim rose quite sharply from 2.3 Million in 2006 to a staggering 3.6 Million. Though online portals Paypal and eBay remained the most spoofed brands, it appears phishers are getting more creative utilizing fake electronic greetings cards, foreign businesses, and charitable organizations in their attacks on consumers. Furthermore these criminals are increasingly targeting debit card and banking credentials rather than credit cards, because the fraud protection mechanisms there are far weaker, according to a study done at The University of California at Berkeley.
This was already covered on Ultra-Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and those of you who don't have Ultra-Slashdot, just send me your e-mail address, your Slashdot password, and your credit card number (just for verification), and I'll be sure to enable it for you...
You pay for internet porn??? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:This was already covered on Ultra-Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Be sure to post a journal with the usernames/numbers of anybody who actually does this, so we can stone them.