28% of Phishing scams fool users

[Brett_Tabke]

Shocking link to a story on slahsdot detailing a recent survey on Phishing:
[slashdot.org...]

[msnbc.msn.com...]

Anti-spam firm MailFrontier Inc. showed 1,000 consumers examples of so-called "phishing" e-mail as well as legitimate e-mail from companies such as eBay and PayPal. About 28 percent of the time, the consumers incorrectly identified the phishing messages as legitimate.

[robotsdobetter]

If people would look at the URLs there would be less phishing problems.

[Brett_Tabke]

Some of the urls are quite creative. There was an ebay one last month that ran through a redirect on ebay's server. So it appeared to come straight from ebay.

[robotsdobetter]

I know that, but I was saying on some the URL can be seen. Most Internet users don't look at it. I just got one a few days ago, it was for AOL (I use AOL.) pictures, I knew what it was because I looked at the URL and it isn't hard for Internet users to change a few habits to be safe.

I just don't understand how it can be so hard for someone not to look at the url or type the address yourself in to make sure it's right. If you don't know for sure email them.

[jo1ene]

28%? Is that all?

[Essex_boy]

Thats a lot.

[Joop]

I think that as the consumers were told that some were fraud and some were legitimate, the 28% reflects that these people knew that some of them were fake and were naturally on their guard.

If they'd actually been able to send them out and see how many people responded to them, the percentage would have been higher.

[jo1ene]

If they'd actually been able to send them out and see how many people responded to them, the percentage would have been higher.

This is what I was thinking. My husband is in consulting and he's constantly cleaning up after stuff like this. Some of his clients now ask him first.

[Essex_boy]

Must admit i nearly got caught by a paypal one about 2 months ago, Ive been on teh web since '98 and should have knowon better.