Significant Jump in Credit Card Phishing Scams in 2017

A startling increase in phishing scams that specifically target retailers, financial institutions, and online payment systems, was reported by Kaspersky Labs for last year. The study tracked phishing from the end of 2016 to mid-October 2017 from everywhere in the world where they have customers. It found that in 2017, the total number of phishing attacks overall using online payments was 15.31%. Compared to 7.08% in 2015, that’s an increase of 34.33%. Quite a change, so what gives?

Kaspersky finds a drastic surge in purchases made on mobile devices, in particular…smartphones. Overall last year, 44.6% of website visits on mobile devices were done on smartphones. In fact, smartphone purchases made up 26% of the overall shopping revenue.

Study authors believe that increased phishing attempts go hand-in-hand with our smartphone society. Their report also finds that historically huge shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are extra-ripe for phishing. According to news from Tech Crunch, on 2017’s Black Friday, $5.03B in online sales were posted. Nearly three billion of that total was done using mobile devices. Looking at it another way, more than 50% of online sales were made using mobile devices.

Phishers bombard devices with fast-paced, non-stop spam offering incredible deals. Too many shoppers react to a great sale and not to common sense. That translates to little or no concern about the offer being legitimate and phisher’s count on that. Human reaction and emotion is often their best friend and a very lucrative friend at that.

It’s important to make sure to stop and evaluate the site and the deal before entering any payment or other personal information into a website. If the deal sounds too good to be true, it is. Instead of clicking links or attachments received in spam email, go directly to the shop’s website and make the purchase there. If the store isn’t so well known, or is completely unfamiliar to you, do some independent research on it first to make sure it’s not a fake.

Kaspersky’s study finds an overall increase in online banking led to a spike in phishing. Just two years ago, online banking made up 17.45% of overall financial phishing. 2017 saw that number jump to 24.47%. Phishers are big on sending email spam that duplicates financial and merchant websites. This leaves many users with little doubt it’s the real deal. In goes your bank account or credit card information and out goes your money. Maybe the thought of a phisher looking to separate you from your money isn’t all that worrisome to consumers. It appears that great offers and quick convenience, however, are.

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