Experts at SophosLabs have made public a new statistics concerning the phishing phenomenon. According to the security vendor, the predilect targets of phishing scams are PayPal and eBay clients. The ratio of fraud attempts directed at users of the two online services amounts to 75% of all phishing e-mails scanned by Sophos. The company has revealed that out of all the identified phishing e-mails in its worldwide spam network, no less than 54.3% were destined for PayPal customers while another 20.9% targeted eBay users. Phishing e-mails are scams designed to trick a user into revealing confidential data that would enable an attacker to commit identity fraud. In this context the providers of online services involving financial transactions have a responsibility to educate their customers in order to prevent phishing.

"The reason why the phishers focus so much on PayPal and eBay is because they are so popular around the world. Although bank customers do also suffer from phishing attacks, they tend to be less likely to have the global reach that these net giants have," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "PayPal and eBay have worked hard to educate and protect their customers from these kind of attacks, but the best solution is for computer users to be more savvy about securing their identity in the first place, and think before they click."