Application security

PayPal, Barclays are phishers’ favorites, according to PhishTank

PayPal, Barclays Bank and eBay were the three firms most targeted by phishers last month, according to statistics compiled by PhishTank users.

The public scam-reporting community, which allows consumers to report phishing scams, then vote on their authenticity, logged over 94,000 votes in December.

Out of the more than 20,000 unique phishing lures reported last month, 11,300 were verified as scams, according to a report from OpenDNS, the creators of PhishTank. Nearly 800 reports were dismissed as invalid phishes.

More than 2,200 validated phishing attempts targeted PayPal users, with another 1,300 targeting users who bank with U.K.-based Barclays.

eBay also was targeted more than 1,000 times, while Midwest-based Fifth Third Bank and Bank of America rounded out the top five targets with 834 and 780 unique phishes, respectively.

"(The top targets) tended to be pretty consistent over the past three months," Allison Rhodes, community manager at OpenDNS, told SCMagazine.com today.

Last week, researchers at F-Secure reported that phishers are now using Flash technology to evade email filters.

Experts also warned last week of a new man-in-the-middle phishing attack targeting Amazon.com users.

 Click here to email Frank Washkuch Jr.

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