Phishing Spam on the Rise for the Holidays

A spam / scam technique known as "Phishing" is rising to record levels with the holiday season. A phishing attack is when someone sends unwanted email to several thousand accounts with an email like the following:

"Dear Sirs, My name is Oblong Omiquitos and I am son of the late prince of Scamdovidia. He was killed last year by rebel groups who have taken over the government. Now I am trying to get my fathers fortune of $21 million out of the country."

All he needs is $5000 cash, or your social security number to make it happen. Oh - and he'll cut you in for $180,000.

According to The Anti-Phishing Working Group "phishermen" (my term, not theirs) have about a 5% success rate of getting victims to turn over their information. If this figure can be taken at face value - it's astonishingly high. Most junk e-mail has a response rate of less than 1 in 1000.

It's amazing how some people get less skeptical when there's money involved instead of more.

A company called Proofpoint is researching the growing problem of phishing. It's "Anti-Spam Lab" claims to have analyzed over 100 different types of attacks that started just last month.

SpamButcher's spam blocker can help identify and delete many types of common phishing attacks.

Resource: Phishing Spam on the Rise for the Holidays