According to a Gartner study, the high-income earners are the preferred targets of online scamsters like ‘phishers‘. According to the study, people whose annual income is above $100,000 received 50% more phishing emails than those earning lesser. What’s more shocking is that the wealthy lost four times more money than they poorer counterparts.
The number of adults who received phishing emails doubled from 57 million two years back to 109 million this year. The total loss incurred is a whopping $2.8 billion!!
Avivah Litan, VP, Gartner said; “The good news is that, this year, fewer people think they lost money to phishers, but when they did lose, they lost more. The average loss per victim nearly quintupled between 2005 and 2006, and the thieves seem to be targeting higher-income earners who are also more likely to transact on the internet.”
Following a survey of 5000 individuals in America, Gartner estimates that a staggering 24.4 million Americans were conned by phishers this year alone. Among them, the high-income group lost an average of $4,362 per individual.
Disturbing stats indeed. However, what perplexes me is the fact that the phishers have access to the info of Internet shoppers whose income is above $100,000. The sophisticated targeting of this high-income group is no coincidence and a thorough investigation might reveal something even more sinister - e.g. the phishing operations are run in connivance with bank/credit card officials or might even include sales persons working in shops where the victims made purchases.
