Good Phishing

Among the thousand or so uninvited emails that flood my in-box daily, hundreds are phishing expeditions. Although I don't inventory them, the number seems to keep escalating. This study reveals that my experience is not uncommon:

The number of phishing attacks launched each month has increased nearly 10-fold this year, tech security company MessageLabs said Monday.

The company, which has intercepted almost 20 million phishing e-mails throughout 2004, said in its annual report that the number of phishing attacks has soared from 337,050 in January to 4.5 million in November. The rate rose most sharply between June and July--from 264,254 to 2.5 million--which could be due to the widespread use of zombie networks.

In September 2003, the U.K.-based company intercepted just 279 phishing emails.

Oh, I long for the good old days of 2003!