Yihaaaa!
Britain is tops when it comes to phishing! That means...Britannia rules the waves again! Suck on that, American capitalistic piggies!
British punters are being served three times as many phishing links to trojans and exploit kits than the US, and five times more than the Germans, according to a ProofPoint study. The security researchers say that while the English were being served more malicious links, Germans were hit with the greatest amount of unsolicited …
"I wonder whether we're bigger targets because English is more widely spoken worldwide than German."
According to the blog post Krauts have marginally more spam emails per user than Brits, Frogs or Yanks, although the differences are fairly small - so language of the user has little to do with the prevalence of spam. But within the spam emails the big difference is the number of dodgy links.
It seems more likely that there are other considerations, such as (perhaps) higher levels of electronic banking in the UK versus other markets, weaker security in the UK versus other markets. Whilst gullibility may be a factor, the absence of a dodgy URL doesn't mean the spam isn't criminal, so it is difficult to conclude that Britain has a greater proportion of mugs. And reading the blog post, it seems to me that the authors define a malicious URL as one that seeks to serve malware - so potentially passive phishing isn't included.
The other component is whether particular countries ISPs are better at blocking malicious content, although the spam figures suggest there's not much to choose.
I reckon it's more likely due to non native English speakers having a better grasp of English grammar than native Brits do, so the obvious mistakes in spam emails are, well, obvious (to the non-natives).
The grammatically challenged chav-generation may well not notice the glaring mistakes that set the spam-bells off.
All the stats are skewed !!
This is probably just my inbox, I get so much of the crap !!!! Im so sorry.
although mind you receiving and falling for phishing are two different things. I receive so many phishing emails, but it doesn't mean i click on them.
In that regard in my lifetime i have clicked on possibly only 1 and left the site when it was incorrect.
I emailed you guys at the weekend about me forwarding phishing emails onto the Halifax and their security address not liking attachments, how about an article/report/investigation into the steps the banks and other organisations do, including email providers when we report to them we have received phishing emails, does anything actually happen, or do they just get binned?
As a hard working Nigerian scammer I resent the implication that we are anything like RBS.
Although if I was to receive a few billion quid in a government bailout I would need trusted people such as yourself to help me transfer the money - just send your account details to ...
"As a hard working Nigerian scammer I resent the implication that we are anything like RBS.
Although if I was to receive a few billion quid in a government bailout I would need trusted people such as yourself to help me transfer the money - just send your account details to ..."
Nigerian scammer grammar fail I think.
not sure if I missed something, but are they saying that we receive less SPAM but our SPAM is more likely to contain a dodgy URL? If so, presumably that doesn't matter, what would be interesting would be any figures on conversion/click-thru rates
Any dodgy spammers/phishers out there willing to shed some light on where they succeed the most?
The way poor Brits are abused by their banking sector, these mails aren't phishing, they are probably just direct appeals for taxpayer money while cutting out the political middleman.
"Dear British Citizen,
Please send us your money. We could of course go to the government and get your money, but that involves a lot of threats and lobbying for us, and then you feeling bad about your political system. We would much prefer that you accept the inevitability of us getting our hands into your wallet, and make a personal decision to surrender your cash accordingly. The good news is that since we are a major bank, we take credit cards, cash, loose change--whatever you've got in your pockets. Please mail your remittance to....."