Re: [gnso-rap-dt] Am interested in members comments on this article......

["Frederick Felman" <Frederick.Felman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Traditional spam is down. Something else is afoot.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 27, 2009, at 8:59 AM, "Richard Tindal" <Richard.Tindal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> wrote:
>  Phishing' drops; are scammers switching tactics
>
>
>
> » Links to this article
>
> By JORDAN ROBERTSON
>
> The Associated Press
> Wednesday, August 26, 2009; 6:58 AM
>
> SAN FRANCISCO -- Internet criminals might be rethinking a favorite  
> scam for stealing people's personal information.
> A report being released Wednesday by IBM Corp. shows a big drop in  
> the volume of "phishing" e-mails, in which fraud artists send what  
> looks like a legitimate message from a bank or some other company.  
> If the recipients click on a link in a phishing e-mail, they land on  
> a rogue Web site that captures their passwords, account numbers or  
> any other information they might enter.
> IBM's midyear security report found that phishing accounted for just  
> 0.1 percent of all spam in the first six months of this year. In the  
> same period in 2008, phishing made up 0.2 percent to 0.8 percent of  
> all spam.
> It's not clear what, if anything, the decline means. (It also  
> doesn't appear to be a statistical illusion caused by an increase in  
> other kinds of spam. IBM said overall spam volume hasn't expanded,  
> like it did in years past.)
> "That is a huge, precipitous decline in the amount of phishing,"  
> said Kris Lamb, director of the X-Force research team in IBM's  
> Internet Security Systems division, which did the report. But "I  
> wouldn't tell anybody that phishing has died as a threat."
> Lamb believes phishing might have fallen off because computer users  
> are getting smarter about identifying phony Web sites. Security  
> software is also getting better at filtering out phishing sites  
> before Web surfers ever seen them.
> It could also be that criminals are moving on from phishing to  
> another kind of attack, involving malicious software. IBM said it is  
> seeing more instances of "Trojan horse" programs, which are used to  
> spy on victims.
> Dean Turner, director of Symantec Corp.'s global intelligence  
> network, who was not involved in IBM's research, said Symantec has  
> also noticed less phishing, but warned that it could increase again  
> later in the year. Phishing scams spike around the holidays, he said.
> IBM found that criminals are changing the types of businesses they  
> attack with phishing. Sixty-six percent of phishing targets were  
> banks, down from 90 percent last year. Meanwhile, companies that  
> handle online payments, like PayPal, are being mimicked in phishing  
> messages more frequently.
> To protect yourself against phishing, access sensitive sites on your  
> own, rather than by following links in e-mails, which might lead to  
> phishing sites.