Evolution of the Sample Clauses

Evolution of the. “Phishing problem” size The following statistics summarize the phishing phenomenon evolution, extent and consequences. In the USA alone, the number of clients that had lost money due to phishing attacks raised from 2.3 million in 2006 to 3.6 million in 2007 [122]. The estimated total losses for US victims were around U$ 3 billion per year in the mid-2000s [110][122]. In 2009, the largest fraction of complaints (21%) received by the Federal Trade Commission from Internet users was related to identity theft attributed to phishing emails, which resulted in a loss for consumers exceeding US$ 1.7 billion [122]. 49 For the sake of readability the text refers always to phishing, with the tacit inclusion of the other forms of *shing. In 2005 the estimated number of unique phishing messages per week was 33 million [113]. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, in the first half of 2009 more than 55,000 phishing attacks (corresponding to unique phishing websites) occurred. Between mid-2009 and 2011 a drop in the number of attacks was observed, due to the switch in the activities of the Avalanche gang50 (which is held responsible for many phishing campaigns) from traditional into malware-based phishing campaigns; in particular, Trojan horses were the most popular type of malware deployed by phishing attacks in 2011 [112]. Figure 23 - Phishing Rate in the Period 2012-2014 (Source: Symantec [22]) cloud file storage, or email accounts51. As shown in Figure 23 a significant reduction of the email phishing rate has been observed in recent years, whereas phishing emails are more and more used to phish for professional account logins such as banking details, LinkedIn accounts, Around 2005, the main consequences of phishing attacks were financial and productivity losses for corporations, with corporate espionage being a minor concern; in particular, such losses came also from attacks that loaded software to turn computers into zombies, enabling hackers to engage in other illegal activities like spamming and further phishing attacks [113]. Even worse, the cost of managing anti-phishing efforts and maintaining trust among users were deemed to be much larger than users' losses [109]. Subsequently, identity theft became another major concern, as it can damage personal reputation of victims, e.g., by reducing their credit rating or linking them to illegal activities [110][121]. A further consequence is the reduction of consumer trust in email-based business communication an...