E-commerce favorite prey for phishing sites

As of the end of July, the Anti-phishing Alliance of China (APAC) has received a total of nearly 20,000 cases reporting phishing Web sites and almost 19,700 of them have been handled, Beijing News reported on Monday.

A report by the APAC shows that over 90 percent of netizens were deceived by phishing sites last year, with e-mails and instant messaging being the main channels. If calculated based on nearly 88 million active online shoppers, the average loss stood at 86.5 yuan per person.

The reports received by the APAC in the first seven months of this year more than doubled the total of 2009. Over 90 percent of the phishing sites have counterfeited the Web sites of Taobao, Tencent and ICBC. Some 4,000 of them that have targeted Taobao have been closed down.

This shows that e-commerce Web sites, represented by Taobao, have become the greatest targets of the phishing sites.

The report also noted that the phishing sites have led to netizens losing confidence about the Internet and hindered the sound development of the Internet in China.

By Liang Jun, People's Daily Online