More than 75% of all consumers are experiencing an increase in incidents of the Internet scams known as spoofing and phishing and 35% report receiving fake e-mails at least once a week, according to Truste, an online privacy nonprofit organization.
The country’s total monetary loss to victims is estimated at approximately $500 million.
Based on a national sample of 1,335 Internet users across the U.S., seven out of 10 respondents revealed that they have unintentionally visited a spoofed Web site, a site masquerading as belonging to a legitimate financial entity.
More than 15% of these spoofed respondents admit to being phished or being duped into providing sensitive private information like credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and checking account information to a fraudulent site.
Online consumers have become more skeptical about e-mail and Web sites as a result of these experiences and want to see action taken to address the problem, according to the report.
In a related development, Amazon.com and Microsoft Corp. have joined forces to attack the tide of spam and fraudulent e-mail messages by suing several suspected spammers and phishers for spoofing Amazon.com’s domain name for e-mail scams, according to wire service reports.
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