The word phishing certainly won’t bring any good thoughts if we’re talking about email. Anyone in the hosting industry, email marketing sector or even just curious, will be interested in knowing more about phishing and how common it is.
People all around the world get phishing emails every day and it has been very common since the use of the internet. A phishing attack, or just phishing email, is a malicious attempt to get sensitive information, from a target, by pretending to be someone else. Sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, banking information and credit card details are the primary targets of a phishing effort.
This can lead to catastrophic damage to your business, social circle, finance or even to your daily life. Avoiding any phishing email will likely be very beneficial to you in the long term. As it is to be expected people fall prey to this every day. But just how common is this?
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You might be surprise to know that in the year 2019 about 1.2% of all emails sent in the first quarter of the year were phishing emails. While in the second quarter of 2018 the number was 1.6% out of all emails sent.
This represents a very large number of emails, to be more precise we can tell you that about 3.4 Billion phishing emails are sent each day worldwide. We can even provide you with more statistics below.
These tips and pieces of information are the result of research done by dashlane blog, Alert Logic and ExplainHowNow, respectively.
Right now, phishing emails are on the rise and no address is considered safe from an attempt. If you’re running a business or just want to protect your information please keep reading.
While not all spam email is considered phishing, it is a good assumption to think that a spam email is likely a phishing attempt. For instance, spam email consists in about 45% of all emails sent and about 14.5 billion spam emails are sent every day. If they all represent a possible phishing attack then the phishing problem is certainly bigger than it seems at first glance.
Just as a minor fact, in January 2 of 2017 a phishing scam in the Gmail platform targeted nearly a billion users worldwide. This information can only lead us to the conclusion that less than well intended individuals are perfecting the targeting and use of phishing attempts. Now days, these attempts are becoming more and more sophisticated. This is one of the reasons companies worldwide are investing in anti-phishing software.
While we cannot tell you with all certainty when you will be targeted, we can tell you that people receive phishing emails every day and it often times it comes straight from hackers. For instance, we have the following data.
These numbers can come as a surprise for some people, after all phishing emails have been around for a long time now. This only means that you need to be on your guard. Phishing emails tend to target individuals that have little to none experience with emails in general.
There are some common phishing lures that you should watch out for., along with interesting information.
Remember that the most common lure is not necessarily the most effective, in this case they’re not. The reason most people fall prey to these scams and phishing emails is because people like to believe that something especial or good is always waiting to happen to them. Confidence and trust are a sweet spot for conmen and hackers.
There’s no way to never receive a phishing email. There are ways to never fall prey to one however. You may care for some interesting data about that.
Most companies now days are very interested in creating awareness of phishing emails among their employees. While someone might lose a job due to falling prey of a phishing email, the company might lose in average 1.6 million Us dollars.
For the most part people are the ones that recognize the warnings of a phishing email and act accordingly. This is why the best security for your sensitive information is always yourself.
With over 3.4 Billion phishing emails sent each day you can bet that some will reach you eventually. This does not mean that you’re in real danger, it just means that you need to be prepared and guarded. Never give sensitive information over an email and watch the format and spelling. Use a good security software to validate every link in every email. Now you know just how many phishing emails are sent each day.
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