Australia ranks #1 in phishing

Australia has ranked as the most targeted country for phishing attacks.

A study by Kaspersky Lab found that phishing attacks have almost doubled in Australia, accounting for 24.4 percent of incidents worldwide.

Phishing activity increased globally by 62 percent with over 32 million detections in August.

The top three most targeted websites by phishers were Google, Facebook and Yahoo, collectively attributing over 29 percent of all spam traffic.

“By faking messages from well-known services, social networks or financial organisations, phishers are able to significantly improve the chances of their spam being successful,” said Tatyana Shcherbakova, anti-spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

Experts have attributed the increase in phishing attacks to the seasonal decline in demand for advertising spam.