Phishing sites fool Brits

Nearly nine in 10 British web users did not spot spelling mistakes marking a site as fraudulent, according to a survey commissioned by security giant Verisign.

Phishers trying to trick people into divulging banking details frequently send them to copies of legitimate websites. People in the survey, conducted by You Gov, were shown two images of websites side by side and asked which was fraudulent.

Eighty-eight per cent failed to spot misspellings; 57 per cent did not notice that the padlock security symbol in the address bar was missing, and an anonymous numerical address failed to ring alarm bells for 34 per cent.

And nearly one in four – 23 per cent – failed to see anything suspicious about being asked for additional account information.

Andrew McClelland, business development director at e-retail organisation IMRG, said: “Phishing continues to be a major challenge for online businesses.”