Test your knowledge of phishing attacks

In the last time all that the IT media talks about is the gravity and the sudden increase of the phishing attacks, drawing attention on an expanding phenomenon which has as a result the loss of personal information.

Many users are ignorant or indifferent towards the repeated warnings of the security companies which are alarmed by every quick spreading worm/virus. Why would things be any different in the case of phishing, a relatively new type of attack?

Somebody thought about testing the knowledge of the Internet surfers about this phenomenon and developed a web site where you can check the way you handle such an attack. You can take the test here http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/phishing_uk.html. The test consists of a series of modified emails that simulate official bank or e-commerce emails. Users have to track the forged messages and to point out the elements that led them to that conclusion. The result page indicates the correct answers and offers detailed information about the identification methods of a phishing attack.

Although at the beginning, the phishing phenomenon was associated to the United States virtual space, currently these attacks are world wide spread and are launched from countries with important online activity.

Last year in June, An American version of the same test was published and over 300,000 Internet surfers took the test. Unfortunately, 96% of them failed at least on step of the test, which in the case of a real attack can prove fatal.