Phishing Costs Nearly $1 Billion

Digital Security News

July 15, 2005

By Dr. Glenn Gearhart

A recently-released survey found phishing scams cost Americans nearly $1 billion during the period from mid 2004 to mid 2005. According to a poll of 5,000 U.S. Internet users phishing attacks are up and continuing to grow in frequency and creativity.

During the 12 months period, based upon polling projections, 73 million American adults who use the Internet received, or thought they received, an average of more than 50 phishing e-mails. That is 28% higher than the previous period's survey when 57 million Americans reported that they'd been the target of phishing scams.

Research by financial institutions and e-commerce merchants, who are the “trusted bands” being used cyber-criminals to implement these phishing scams, report that phishers are getting sneakier, with tactics that include planting key loggers which watch for specific URL log-in usernames and passwords, various forms of malware and have expanded into pharming scams.

The survey found that about 15% to 20% of those Internet users targeted by a phishing email scam responded to the email and about 2% to 3% actually provided the cyber-criminals with confidential personal information. Although these percentages are small, the actual number of impacted Internet users is large, more than 1.2 million U.S. adults who lost about $929 million.

By Glenn Gearhart, CEO, ACAP Security Inc., a provider of higher level security solution to the financial industry. glenn@acapsecurity.com.

White Paper: 091105 ACAP Security Inc.