Phishing attacks jump by 150pc as some suffer €30,000 loss
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Thursday April 02 2009
THERE has been a 150pc increase in phishing attacks, with some bank customers having their accounts cleaned out, it has emerged.
Some customers were having as much as €30,000 taken from their online accounts from fraudsters who gain their access codes by stealth.
The shocking rise in phishing, where scammers pretend to be sending an email from a customer's bank in an effort to get their PIN numbers, comes at a time when there is a surge in people banking online.
New figures from the Irish Banking Federation (IBF) and the Irish Payment Services Organisation (IPSO) show that around two thirds of the adult population are now registered to use online banking.
Surge
But IPSO's Una Dillon admitted yesterday that there has also been a surge in phishing attacks. In 2007, 25 phishing attacks were successful with total losses in the region of €400,000, Ms Dillon said.
Last year, there were 63 cases with total loses to the banks of €220,000.
She said there had been 5,000 phishing attempts last year. An attempt is defined as a situation when the banks become aware that criminals are trying to use images of their online banking sites to dupe customers into giving their online security information to the criminal.
Banking online has not been affected by fraudulent activity but phishing emails, originating in Russia and Eastern Europe, are now more prevalent, she said.
Ms Dillon added that all the banks tend to refund customers who lose money to phishing attacks.
Statistics compiled by the IBF show that 2.2 million customers are now registered to bank online. IBF chief executive Pat Farrell said the increase was consistently strong as 100,000 new customers registered in each of the past eight quarters, to end 2008.
- Charlie Weston
