Would you fall for www.paypa1.com?

It might be slightly off topic for this blog, but as phishing attacks are such unpleasant things I thought it worth mentioning this really good article that a colleague forwarded to me.

It talks about why people fall for phishing attacks and how we might start to address the problem. How closely do you really look at URLs? Would www.paypa1.com fool you into thinking it was www.paypal.com?

Or that www.bankofthevvest.com was www.bankofthewest.com?

The report also points out how easy it is for spoofers to put false images like padlocks and https refereneces into the status bar, and how many people fall for that.

Well worth a read, and kind of sobering. I like to think I'm wise to these attacks but I'm sure on a bad day I could easily fall for some of these tricks.

Take a look at our anti-phishing site for more info.

It's also worth pointing out that if you use the MSN Toolbar with IE6 there is an add-in for that http://addins.msn.com/phishingfilter/