Phishing increases ten-fold over the Thanksgiving weekend

I just got finished writing about Symantec's prediction that spam would break new records this holiday season.

It appears that in one category of spam a.k.a. phishing, they were right on the money.

Another computer security company (Barracuda Networks) is reporting:

Barracuda Networks, Inc., the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, reported a more than 10x surge in the number of phishing Web sites created and three times the number of phishing emails sent out in the last 24 hours. This increase in activity indicates that scammers and their criminal networks are working feverishly to cash in on ‘Black Friday,’ traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, and the long Thanksgiving Day weekend.

Here is more detail on what they observed:

Barracuda Central, a 24/7 security operations center at Barracuda Networks that continuously monitors the latest spam, virus and other Internet threats, including phishing Web sites, observed a tremendous increase in the number of fake Web sites targeting popular shopping sites, including eBay, Amazon, PayPal, and other e-commerce sites, pop up on Thanksgiving Day. Typically phishing Web sites are set up via compromised PCs of innocent businesses and are quickly shut down once the business has been notified. However, by exploiting the four-day Thanksgiving weekend in which most U.S. business activity shuts down on Thursday and Friday, scammers are banking on the idea that the sites will go uninterrupted because no one is available to take them offline.

One of the better resources to learn about phishing, which is a method used to steal personal and financial information is the Anti Phishing Working Group. The site has a lot of information on the subject, including what to do if you've been phished and where you can report it.

Barracuda press release via Business Wire, here.