Facebook facing increased phishing attacks

Network world - True to the dictum that popularity extracts its own price, Facebook has left eBay behind, becoming the second most popular target for phishers using spam e-mails.

According to security solutions company Kaspersky Lab's July 2010 report on worldwide spam activity, Facebook accounted for 12.81 per cent of phishing messages--more than three times as much as in the month of June.

The e-commerce business PayPal remained in first place after being targeted by more than half (53.48 per cent) of all phishing attacks.

Hong Kong and Taiwan two top 20 newcomers in spam

According to Kaspersky Lab, the average percentage of e-mail traffic that was spam was 82.9 per cent in July. Links to phishing sites were found in 0.03 per cent of all e-mail traffic.

The US and India maintained their leading positions as the most popular sources of spam, two newcomers to the top 20 were high-tech Hong Kong (17th place with 1.8 per cent) and Taiwan (19th place with 1.3 per cent of spam).

The full version of the spam report for July 2010 is available at www.securelist.com.