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Phishers Love EBay And PayPal
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-07-28
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An astonishing 75 percent of all emails that attempt to phish information from victims targeted users of eBay and its PayPal payment processing division.
 | | Phishers Love eBay And PayPal |  |
Research by Sophos Labs discovered that when it comes to finding potential targets for phishing scams, there is no more popular bait than PayPal and eBay.
The security software maker said that out of all the scams collected in its global network of spam traps, 54.3 percent were phishes that targeted users of PayPal. And 20.9 percent aimed for users of eBay.
Sophos attributed this to the global reach of the two services:
"The reason why the phishers focus so much on PayPal and eBay is because they are so popular around the world. Although bank customers do also suffer from phishing attacks, they tend to be less likely to have the global reach that these net giants have," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
We see a lot of those emails in our inboxes as well, and they take several forms:
Invitations to become PowerSellers, just like the sample Sophos displayed;
Purported messages about problems with an order;
"Security" problems with my account, requiring me to login.
All of these attacks require the victim to login to a site made to look like the real eBay or PayPal login. The most insidious of these sites duplicate the login screen, capture the data input to a form, and then send it to the real site. To the user, the results make it look like they have logged in as normal, when in reality their credentials have been stolen.
Both eBay and PayPal provide information on spotting those phishing emails. Users of either service can forward suspicious emails to the companies for investigation.
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Tag: phishing
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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