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420,000 Scam E-mails Sent Every Hour In UK Alone
An anonymous reader writes "More than 420,000 scam e-mails are sent every hour in the UK, according to a report by CPP, which estimates that Brits were targeted by 3.7 billion phishing e-mails in the last 12 months alone. A quarter of us admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over GBP285. Fake banking e-mails are the most common method used by criminals, with 55% of those targeted receiving seemingly legitimate e-correspondence from high street banks."
A quarter of us admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters ...
Okay so the population of the UK is what? Sixty million? So a quarter of that would be fifteen million. Fifteen million victims.
... with the average victim losing over GBP285.
Okay the details in the article are scant but I assume they are talking about the mean and not the median. If that's true then 285*(1.5*10^7) = over four billion quid? And that's about six billion USD.
My gut reaction is to question this survey or whatever means they used to collect the above information. I can't find anything but this news article on their site, anybody have a link to the original report so we can inspect their methods?
My work here is dung.
...how long until the general public has caught on to the point where Spam is no longer profitable? Then again, I would assume the costs associated with it are fairly low...
Still, how are people dumb enough (or just ignorant enough) to click on spam in 20-freakin-10?
Living With a Nerd
This is precisely why I've gone back to smoke signals!
I'd try telegraphy if I could be assured that no Viagra ads would come my way or that yon' government agencies would not intercept...
Cheers!
--Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
"420,000 scam e-mails are sent every hour in the UK"....?
Surely it means that these emails are received? They are not all generated in the UK.
Well, not the ones I get, which clearly use poor English or American spellings. (Note that I distinguish between the two.)
Obviously, there is a small industry behind scam emails: people that harvest emails, ones that come up with "scam campaigns" (fake pay-pal or citibank solicitations), developers, IT to maintain servers, etc. It's hard to imagine that 420K scam emails an hour in UK alone are sent by a few amateurs.
I could be sent a phishing email. I could click the link. I could provide the phisher with 3 numbers from my pin, and 4 characters from my password. Over time, I could provide them with the whole PIN and password.
What could they do with this information?
Pay my bills and nothing more.
Why?
Because I have a card reader that provides an encrypted string after I provide it with my chipped card, PIN and a string from the website. I need to do this for every new transaction.
I still believe that only the greedy get scammed.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
The best spam stopping tool is still an alert, critical mind!
I posted an advert on Craigslist, then someone replied stating that they'd give me £410 for a £230 object if I were to send it to Africa. They faked an email from paypal, saying they'd payed, hoping I'd send it away. But fortunately I'm not stupid enough to think that emails are always real. I went to Paypal by typing the domain in, and sure enough, it was blank, and it was a fake. I emailed the person back disappointed that they'd try to scam me. The person's email (for all to block) was sndrcollins9 at gmail dott com .
Stop phishing scams! Don't be gullible.
Being a brit myself, i guess i can see the humor behind this all, but my guess is pc users are missing some element of
know how when it comes to being up to date with all the security issues of today. Up to date with your AV, not opening emails with attachments....scanning every file before opening, etc, etc.... seems to me too many users are security
illiterate.
I get these stupid emails all the time. Most of them go into my "bulk mail", but I still feel compelled to go in my bulk mail folder to have a good laugh. I read the emails and wonder how stupid people can be. HOW can anybody fall for giving out personal information without visiting the company's website YOURSELF (entering the URL yourself) and how can anybody fall for the wire-transfer scam?? WHO in their right mind would wire money to someone they don't know?
Well, that's not the part I need enlightening on. WHERE are all these criminals? I've gotten ones from Africa but there are an overwhelming number of them that say they're in England. If they want you to wire money to England, I don't see how they could be lying about their location. That's what confuses me! England isn't a 3rd world country. I've always regarded Britons as equals (I'm American). So, who the hell are these people??
Anyone get one of those surveys asking about the utility of /.? They use your /. account details and email (from a comment posted, I guess), and how they're doing research for some university in China? (Hong Kong, actually, but China is accurate).
I never answered mine - there was a little nagging feeling at the back of my mind saying "scam!!!" which is enough to avoid it.
One per inhabitant of the UK - every six days. I'd love to get one only every six days.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
More than 420,000 scam emails are sent every hour in the UK according to a report by CPP which estimates that Brits were targeted by 3.7 billion phishing emails in the last 12 months alone. A quarter of us admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over GBP285 each.
First of all. . , who exactly is "CPP"??
It took a bit of Google confusion to determine that it's this some bullshit corporate security racket...
http://www.cpp.co.uk/about-cpp/
It appears that their business model is based around selling security devices and systems, featuring ID cards as one of their premier items. The interests here are just a BIT conflicted.
Second of all. . . Sorry, but as much as I think the herd is idiotic, I simply don't believe that one in four Brits is THAT stupid.
Lies, damned lies and statistics, right?
Oh whatever. If you can't work out why this is utter and complete bullshit, then further writing isn't going to make a very big difference and you probably feel like all those security cameras make you safer.
Fear-mongering bullshit ADVERTISING of this nature has no place on Slashdot.
-FL
CPP eh??
The report looked something like this:
#include
#include
#include "scam.h"
void main()
{
for(;;) {
printf("Number of email scams this hour: %d\n",scams(time()));
_sleep(3600);
}
}
output:
Number of email scams this hour: 420212
Number of email scams this hour: 419494
Number of email scams this hour: 422230
Number of email scams this hour: 41^C
^C
C:\mod_this_up>
That's the scam report from CPP!!!
420,000... high street banks...
The UK is seeing an epidemic of stoner fraud.
You mean I didn't really win the UK lottery? Oh no, I was so counting on that.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
If 420,000 scam e-mails are sent every hour in the UK, how many will it be in Nigeria?
The "average" or mean amount is not very "meaningful" in this case (pun slightly intended), since most people do not respond to the scam so only the ones who do and end up paying money are those that skew the average. It's like identity theft: the average is whatever it may be, but the median amount lost is 0, because most people recover the losses. Most citizens would be unaffected (at least directly), so don't mislead by mentioning "the average citizen".
They have a big stake in the market, and have one of the most pernicious, devious and downright aggressive marketing and sales tactics it's ever been my displeasure to be on the receiving end of. So don't just take those numbers with a ladle-full of salt, take them as plain "marketing bullshit dressed up as research and regurgitated by lazy publishers"
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN