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Fraud Updates
PCB News
Fraud Updates 2008
14 November
It seems that despite ever increasing public awareness, the spam and phishing industries continue to flourish.
A recent study by the University of Berkeley in California found that a tiny response rate of only 0.00001% can generate income of $2m a year. This sum was based on 28 sales being generated by from 350 million emails being sent over a 26 day period.
The study shows that not only do people still reply to spam emails, even the tiny proportion who do, make it a worthwhile exercise for spammers and encourage an industry which is estimated to send 100 billion emails a day.
Phishing is more sinister and phishers are becoming more sophisticated. Clicking on documents attached to emails or clicking on links in emails can cause keylogging software to be installed on the recipient's computer. Information is then harvested and used by the fraudster to access bank accounts. An internet security company found that there were over 1,000 phishing attacks a day towards the end of 2007.
There appears to be no end in sight to spam or phishing emails and the fraudsters always seem to be at least one step ahead of the authorities. As a result, the network system's security within a business should be regularly updated and staff should be aware of company protocol and should a system breach occur, professional advice should be sought without fail.
| December 2008 | October 2008 |