17 November, 2006 - 9:54am

A new study from Gartner Research found that over 100 million US adults have received phishing scams this year, almost twice the number of attacks in 2004 of 57 million. They estimate that financial losses from the attacks have amounted to more than $2.8 billion for 2006.

According to Gartner, the phishing e-mails that reach consumers are now impersonating banks less often, and other brands, such as PayPal and eBay, more often. Despite improvements by browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer that try to flag suspicious sites, Gartner analyst Avivah Litan predicts that "Many of the browser upgrades are still incomplete and immature in terms of protections afforded. For at least two more years, phishing attacks will continue to increase since it’s still a lucrative business for the perpetrators."

This is precisely why we need more advanced Identity 2.0 technologies that can help counter this type of internet ID fraud.