eBay and PayPal phishing slows

by Chris Dawson

This post was written in October 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

eBay and PayPal Phishing statisticsAccording to a report out today from anti-virus vendor Sophos, eBay and PayPal phishing emails have dropped significantly in the past year. A year ago nine out of ten spoof emails were targetting either PayPal or eBay, today it’s down to one in five.

Graham Cluley of Sophos explained “PayPal and eBay users are much less likely to be targeted by virtual muggers, in part due to the efforts the firms have made in educating their customers about what to look out for, and how to protect themselves. The phishers are not turning away from their life of crime, however. They are now turning to a bigger pool of potential victims.”

Whilst eBay and PayPal users are much more aware of phishing emails the fraudsters are simply turning to other companies to target. Smaller credit card companies, online retailers and companies in specific geographic regions are more likely to be the target of phishing today.

Tags for this post: ,
Author: Chris Dawson
Posted at: Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Filed Under Uncategorized
 

Comments

7 Responses to “eBay and PayPal phishing slows”

  1. Steve H on October 16th, 2007 7:30 pm

    Most of the ones I receive now are for Natwest Bank, although the occasional eBay/Paypal one still comes through.

  2. Gill on October 16th, 2007 7:36 pm

    Interesting - however as the research appears to be based on percentage of total phishing emails rather than absolute numbers (and are they counting individual emails received, or just different types of email), not clear whether the actual number has gone up, down or stayed the same.

    That’s my boring pedantic comment for the day!

  3. Scott on October 17th, 2007 2:22 am

    They made this announcement a week a so ago that they were teaming up to fight the phishing problem, if it actually is this effective I wonder why they waited so long to put this in place? This problem has been going on for a long time now, guess if they could have done it sooner they would have, but I am all for getting less phishing junk for sure.

  4. Na on October 17th, 2007 5:07 am

    This is probably slanted - I don’t report phishing emails to the ebay/PP security centres, I just delete them. I may get about one every few weeks. So imagine how many people out there still get the emails and don’t report them.

  5. Genuine PayPal emails with spoof URLs : TameBay on October 19th, 2007 10:46 am

    [...] It has to be more than a little embarrassing for PayPal just as the number of phishing emails are falling and they’ve implemented domain keys to then insert a load of dodgy URLs into their payment notification emails. [...]

  6. UK eBay users at risk : TameBay on October 21st, 2007 1:21 pm

    [...] The Times today confirms that UK eBay users are increasingly becoming the targets for phishing and account takeovers. Unsurprisingly eBay Motors continues to be a major target due to the high ticket price of goods in comparison to other categories. It’s a mark of how well eBay have attacked fraudsters and educated their users that scammers are targetting the UK instead of the larger eBay.com market. [...]

  7. Percy Q Tedd on October 23rd, 2007 10:54 pm

    We continue to get around 10 per HOUR for both eBay and PayPal. We’ve given up sending them to spoof@…. whereas once upon a time we forwarded all of them - that was in the days when we got one or two a day.

    I guess the more your email addresses get known, the more mails you receive.

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