Spam News

Phishing scams drop off during holidays

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Fraudsters take time away from launching phishing scams during holiday periods, new research has suggested.

According to ZDNet, a new report has found that there was a significant drop-off in the number of phishing emails flooding inboxes of large corporations and banks during July and August.

So too, volumes rose again in September, leading the email security researchers to speculate that criminals were taking time off during the summer holiday period.

"Christmas is an obvious opportunity to these fraudsters in what is essentially a B2C activity and consumers are most active at that time," added a spokesperson for Envisional, which was behind the report.

He added that phishing scams are now proving so lucrative that criminals feel they can pick and choose when they get down to their "ugly business."

Elsewhere, vnunet.com has warned that criminals are now offering 'fraud-as-a-service' via chatrooms and other online portals and agreeing to launch phishing scams to meet demand.