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Report Shows Phishers Changing Tactics

Cyber criminals are considering new strategies for lining their pockets by selling your personal informaion.

A paper from IBM Corp. shows a big drop in the volume of "phishing" e-mails, in which sham artists send what looks like a legitimate message from a banking concern or some other company. If the recipients click on a link in a phishing e-mail, they land on a rogue Web site that captures their passwords, account numbers or any other information they might enter.

Small Business owners should know that crooks are changing the types of businesses they attack with phishing. Sixty-six percent of phishing marks were banks, down from 90 percent last year. Meanwhile, companies that manage online payments, like PayPal, are being mimicked in phishing messages more frequently.

IBM's study found that phishing accounted for just 0.1 percent of all spam in the first six months of this year. In the same period in 2008, phishing made up 0.2 percent to 0.8 percent of all spam.

It's not clear-cut what, if anything, the descent means. (It also doesn't appear to be a statistical illusion caused by an increase in other kinds of spam. IBM said overall spam volume hasn't widened, like it did in years past.)

IBM warns that while the report shows a large, precipitous descent in the amount of phishing we should not believe that phishing has died as a menace.

IBM believes phishing might have fallen because computer users are getting smarter about discovering bad Web sites. Security software is also getting improved at filtering out phishing sites before Web surfers ever seen them.

It could also be that criminals are moving on from phishing to another kind of approach, involving malicious software. IBM said it is discovering more instances of "Trojan horse" programs, which are used to spy on victims.

To protect yourself against phishing, access sensitive sites on your own, rather than by following links in e-mails, which might track to phishing sites.

Reference IBM X-Force

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