20 December 2006
Research from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) shows that the number of phishing attacks, where fraudsters attempt to get consumers to part with their bank details by posing as their bank in an email, have risen by a whopping 8,000% in the past two years.
Speaking to the House of Lords' science and technology committee, the FSA said it believed that as much as £45 million had been stolen through phishing scams and that the number of attacks was to increase by a further 90% within the next twelve months.
This is a good thing, according to the UK payments association Apacs, which says that the increase in numbers is clear proof that British consumers are not falling for the scams as easily anymore.
Colin Whittaker, head of security at Apacs, told Computeractive that the conmen's failure to lure bank details out of the public was "an indication of the banks' success in combating phishing".
"Phishing accounts for anywhere between a quarter and half of the attacks that we see that cause losses on customer's accounts," he added.
Although the FSA was still "very concerned" by the numbers of phishing scams, it joined Apacs in rejecting a call for an American-style contact system where banks are required to contact their customers each time they suffer a security breach, which Apacs said would cause "undue alarm".
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