• February 7, 2005

The number of e-mail phishing attacks grew by an average of 38 percent a month during the latter half of 2004, according to the industry-sponsored Anti-Phishing Working Group. Phishing schemes succeeded in garnering user replies nearly 5 percent of the time, the Anti-Phishing Working Group found.

Separately, the Federal Trade Commission reported Tuesday that identity theft complaints rose for the third straight year. But the FTC also reported that complaints about new accounts being opened fraudulently in the name of innocent consumers declined.

Other recent data suggests that Internet-related crime is growing in volume and sophistication. Internet auction fraud accounted for 71 percent of complaints referred to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a joint effort of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. Complaints about money being siphoned out of existing accounts more than doubled from 2002, according to the FTC report.

Nationwide, the FTC logged a total of 388,603 fraud complaints; of those, 205,568 were Internet-related.

--Gavin O'Malley