UK sees massive rise in phishing attacks in early 2008

March 20, 2008; 06:11 AM

20 March 2008: Banking customers are being exposed to increasing levels of online fraud as widespread phishing attacks are rising dramatically in early 2008.  During February 2008 alone, there were over 60,000 phishing emails sent to customers of financial services organisations, according to the Quarterly Fraud Report from online brand monitoring specialist, NetNames.

The research, carried out through NetNames’ sister company Envisional revealed that there has been a 70 per cent rise in phishing attacks between December 2007 and February 2008.  This news comes as a blow to the online security of consumers as the latter half of 2007 saw a dramatic dip in phishing emails after the highs of early 2007, and consumers may have been under the impression that the threat had gone away.

This however, is not the case, and the Quarterly Fraud Report also revealed that online fraudsters are continually targeting customers of particular organisations.  The top 3 ‘phished’ banks have increasingly become the focus of the majority of attacks, accounting for 77 per cent of all phishing emails in December, 79 per cent in January and a massive 88 per cent in February.

Jonathan Robinson, Chief Operating Officer of NetNames commented, “Just as phishing seemed to have slipped off the consumer radar, online fraudsters have leapt on the chance to capitalise on this false sense of security and have increased their phishing activity drastically in the past few months.  Consumers must be aware of this renewed and increasing threat and make sure that they never give out personal details over email, and it is also crucial for the reputation of financial services organisations that they make their customers aware of and help protect them from these threats.”

Research methodology

The analysis investigated the numbers of phishing emails sent to customers of major financial institutions over a three month period between the beginning of December 2007 and the end of February 2008.

About NetNames

NetNames is part of London listed Group NBT plc (LSE: NBT). Through its industry leading domain name management service, NetNames Platinum Service, the company is responsible for managing and protecting online brands for international corporates, including in excess of 30% of the FTSE 100. Following the acquisition of Ascio Technologies in January 2007 NetNames became Europe’s largest domain name management specialist.

NetNames is an ICANN Accredited Registrar with the ability to register domain names in all available suffixes worldwide. The company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Nice, Munich, Madrid, Copenhagen, Zurich and Oslo. For further information, visit www.netnames.com/platinum.