Phishing sites doubled last month - report

April saw a doubling in the number of unique phishing sites, according to a report by industry association the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

The number of unique sites detected by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) rose to 55,643 in April 2007, a massive jump from the 20,871 seen in March, according to the April Phishing Activity Trends report.

Researchers from internet fraud prevention company MarkMonitor said the sharp increase was in part due to phishers putting large numbers of phishing site URLs on the same domain, a tactic first seen last autumn.

Laura Mather, senior scientist at MarkMonitor, said: "We have seen cases where the phisher will put thousands of URLs on the same domain. They do this to get around website blocking that Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 have deployed."

The number of brands used to lure potential victims rose from 166 in March to 174 in April, with more non-financial brands targeted, including social networking, VoIP and numerous large web-based email providers, said APWG. Customers of financial institutions still get the most attention from phishers, with 92.5 per cent of malicious sites directed against them.

In a separate announcement, APWG said it will make a central database fully operational by July 2007 that allows organisations around the globe to share email phishing scam information.

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK