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Nearly 25% British Online Banking Customers Couldn’t Avoid Opening Fake E-mails

About 25% of Internet banking customers in the UK wouldn't avoid viewing e-mails that pose to be messages sent by their banking institution in spite of security specialists advising to be cautious, indicates a research that money.co.uk commissioned.

At the time when recession has affected the Internet too, there is a risk of an attack on 30 Million Internet banking customers in Britain who aren't yet ready for it. The research reveal that over 9 Million people or 31% are not aware of the way to recognize fake e-mails with which cyber fraudsters grab online banking information.

This activity, which is called phishing, usually acts as a forerunner of the Internet banking scam that amounted to £52.5 Million during 2008, an increase of 132% from 2007, according to Britain's payments association APACS.

Furthermore, the study also finds that 38% of British online users are now more concerned about the safety of their bank deposits compared to what they were before the credit crisis. A huge 7.8 Million (26%) of Internet banking consumers would see e-mails that pretend to be alert messages from their banking institution mentioning a security problem - a strategy that fraudsters often use.

Moreover, about 10% of respondents stated that they even followed the instructions in an alert e-mail regarding an urgent banking security problem.

Chris Morling, Managing Director, money.co.uk, said that he was surprised to learn that a large number of people still unaware about fraudsters using bogus e-mails that duped recipients into giving away their security credentials for online banking. According to him, the truth is that although banks do send customers e-mail alerts whenever needed, they hardly solicit a response from them. And certainly they never request accountholders to disclose their security credentials or other personal information, as reported by sourcewire on May 14, 2009.

Further, the younger generation of Internet surfers was more vulnerable to read an e-mail that their bank apparently sent with a warning than their older counterpart, said money.co.uk.

Additionally, these findings appear alarming when phishing frauds are getting increasingly advanced and frequently attacking online surfers to make them victims.

Related article: Nearly 70% of Top 100 Sites Contain Malicious Content

» SPAMfighter News - 5/20/2009

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