Facebook - Fourth Most Favorite Phishing Target

According to Kaspersky Lab, which recently released a report, Facebook is the next most attacked website in phishing assaults following PayPal, eBay and HSBC that were subject to over 50% of the total number of phishing assaults.

Like every time, PayPal was phishers' most favorite prey. Consequently, it received over 50% of the total phishing assaults in Q1 2010. The second target, not unsurprisingly, was eBay, accounting for 13.3% of all phishing attacks, while HSBC was the third.

Significantly, according to the report, Facebook was the fourth most favorite target for phishers. It's for the first time since the company's specialists began monitoring assaults against social-networking websites that they have been so productive.

During Q1 2010, i.e. January to March 2010, Facebook received phishing e-mails in 0.57% of the total e-mail traffic, whereas during March 2010, the percentage dramatically fell to an average of 0.03% in the total e-mail traffic.

At present, Facebook is a heavily visited social networking site, having over 400 Million members and still growing.

Moreover, it allows online scammers to exploit the website's extra options such as the facility for dispatching various requests, invitations and photo links, all having an attached ad in the network as well as to members' mailboxes.

After stealing the account details from the site's users, the criminals normally utilize them for sending bulk spam mails to the accountholders as well as to their contacts within the network. Consequent of this spam is that the criminals are able to reach massive audiences.

In the meantime, during a recent incident in the 3rd week of May 2010, Jim Breyer a board member of Facebook, who is also associated with Accel Partners, a venture capital company, discovered that spam messages went out of his account on Facebook to his friends. The reason was again a phishing scheme that distributed an invitation to some of more than 2,300 contacts of Breyer.

Moreover, the remaining targets on Kaspersky's Top Ten charts are Google, the Internal Revenue Service, the web-hosting provider RapidShare, Bank of America, UBI Credit Union, Bradesco (a Brazilian bank), followed by a "other" category.

Related article: Facebook Users Should be Careful of a Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 5/22/2010