Phishing: Scamming the user

Phishing: Scamming the user

I've read an interesting news about a Phishing study conducted by researchers at Harvard University and UC Berkeley. This kind of deception is becoming a regular thing nowadays.

In Portugal the main focus are the online banks sites and sometimes the usual visa scam. Although, it's only a small part of what happens in America, where about 2 millions of American gave their information to phishing sites in 2003.

In order to understand what was happing, a study was conducted with a group of 22 users, which had to find out if the sites that were being presented were the original site, or a phishing scam.

It seems that 23% of the times users only used the visual content, neglecting everything else, to state their opnion. And a phishing site regarding a bank (Bank of the West), had 91% of the users saying that it was a real site...

It's scary to read this numbers, no wonder Phishing isn't disapearing. It seems quite rentable for the thiefs.

Bottom line, educate the users! Teach them to understandd the visual signs of what makes the site trustable, and if it's asking lots of info just be suspicious!

Also you might start thinking in using a phishing detector within your browser, such software plugins are starting to show up and might be a good help to spot some of the phishing sites.

References:

• Why Phishing Works: The study conducted (PDF format) it's a quick and interesting reading.
• News article about the study
• Anti-Phishing Work Group
• Safe Browsing