Facebook Targeted With Phishing, Occupies Second Highest Position

Leading security company Kaspersky Lab published its monthly report regarding spam operations for July 2010 according to which, Facebook the most widely visited social-networking website replaced eBay that held the 2nd position within the sequence of the most phished companies.

Data obtained from the study show that all through July 2010, spam mails from the entire e-mail traffic contributed a share of 82.9% on average, while web-links taking onto phishing sites accounted for 0.03% of the entire e-mail.

Moreover, Facebook was responsible for 12.8% of all phishing e-mails during July 2010, a threefold rise since June 2010. This caused eBay to move down to the third position at 7.6%.

Online payment website PayPal continued to hold the 1st position as phishing scams targeted it at the rate of 53.48%.

State the security researchers that while attacking Facebook, scammers applied interesting tricks that convinced Facebook users into accessing a spoofed site as well as feeding into it their credentials. The trick involved a bogus "dislike" link that got users to enter their private details to avail non-existent software.

In one other instance, cyber-criminals acquire information for accessing a Facebook account whose login details are subsequently altered in order that its actual owner becomes incapable of reaching the account in future. All this is done to dispatch an e-mail to all the friends of that accountholder stating that while on a vacation in London thieves mugged him just when he was preparing to return home; therefore he needs $500-$1,000 to clear the hotel bills.

In the meantime, Kaspersky's report further disclosed the sources from where phishing and spam mails originated. As per the security company, the United States and India remained on the top positions as countries from where spam originated the most, disseminating 17.2% spam in July 2010 against 9% in June 2010.

Additionally, Europe represented the most significant variation so far as July's ratings were concerned as Italy, Germany and the UK all appeared on the Top Ten charts that listed the prominent spam producing nations. Overall, spam coming from these countries together rose 50% as against that of June 2010.

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

» SPAMfighter News - 9/13/2010