German Security Provider Says 750 PayPal Phishing Sites Are Created Daily

PayPal phishing schemes drive me mad. I probably get about 5-10 emails everyday across my various work and personal email accounts from phishing sites trying to trick me into handing over PayPal details. A German email security provider has shed light on why this is such a frequent occurrence. Apparently everyday an average of 750 new PayPal phishing sites are set up. By simple math that means we see 22,000 of these rotten things every month and 270,000 in the average year.

Most of these Phishing pages are hosted on legitimate websites that have been compromised by cybercriminals so spotting a phishing site may not often be as obvious as you think, although if it isn’t on PayPal.com then it should be pretty obvious.

“The online payment service PayPal is not only one of the most popular online payment methods, but also a preferred target for phishers: PayPal regularly tops the lists of phishing topics worldwide. Every day, an average of 750 newly compromised websites are targeted primarily at PayPal users, according to numbers from Commtouch’s GlobalView™ URL filtering database – resulting in more than 22,000 new sites per month and 270,000 sites per year. The sites are usually legitimate websites that are compromised through security flaws. The findings highlight the need for hosters and website owners to protect their sites and for users to deploy an effective Web security solution.” Stated Eleven Research.

Image courtesy of Eleven Research