Phishing Scams Continue to Rise
Posted by Kraig Baker
Gartner reports that phishing attacks grew 28% from May 2004 to May 2005. Almost 2.5 million people reported losing money because of phishing attacks (and that's just those that admitted to it) to the tune of $929 Million and 11 million people clicked on a phishing e-mail. Despite the increase, it doesn't appear to me that phishing attacks have gotten that much more sophisticated. I think this is an outgrowth of people's general fear of computers and gullibility with respect to the written word. People who fall victim to phishing are undoubtedly the same people who used to forward the Bill Gates chain letter.
The gullibility is disturbing in its own right, but it's something that I don't think we can do too much about, especially when most users view technology as merely a tool to be used, and perhaps do not need, want or care to understand the tech beyond its primary functionality. Let's face it: how many of us drive cars without having anything more than a vague idea of what's under the hood?
But I would wager that most drivers do understand many of the saftey features of their vehicles: how their anti-lock brakes work when driving on an icy road, where the air bags are located, how to install a child seat, etc. They may not understand these features personally, or may choose to ignore them, but there is likely at least a base-line level of familiarity.
What this points to is that technology businesses may need to do a much better job of designing user-friendly and intuitive interfaces and educating consumers so that they are more comfortable managing the security features of their technology, and encouraging users to take a peek "under the hood" (for example, how many people even know how to look at the headers on their e-mail?). Too many technologies are designed to attract tech early adopters, but never evolve to facilitate the use by late-adopters. As a result, late adopters are lucky that they understand how to use the technology, much less understand it in any meaningful way. We can't be surprised when a large portion of the technology-consuming public struggles to add tools or go through what others of us would view as intuitive processes to protect themselves against phishing, spyware, and viruses.
