Phun Phacts About Phishing (and Spam)

According to CipherTrust, a company that makes its money protecting computers from viruses and spam, all the phishing attacks in the world are issued by a mere five “zombie” networks. Even more interesting is the fact that their targets are just as concentrated. Here, from CipherTrust’s page of spam statistics, are the top 5 targets and the percentage of phishing attacks they represent:

CitiBank ………………………..54.16%
Smith Barney ………………..13.48%
SunTrust ………………………10.02%
Paypal ……………………………..7.57%
Wells Fargo ……………………..5.42%

CipherTrust has also analyzed the effectiveness of various kinds of spam. It turns out that pornography is far and away the most effective spam, with a click-through rate of 5.6%. The next-best click-through rate? Pharmaceuticals, at 0.02%. (I couldn’t find these numbers on the CipherTrust website, but the N.Y. Times ran this short piece the other day.) Imagine the blockbuster just waiting to happen: when Citibank starts offering online pornography.