eBay most common brand in phishing scams

The report – based on the end-user submission of almost 300,000 emails believed to be phishes – shows PayPal and its parent eBay served as the lure in 63,437 verified phishing emails.

PayPal was spoofed in 31,719 emails, while the eBay name was faked in just one fewer email, according to the report from PhishTank, a community-based anti-phishing service.

Barclays Bank came in third, with 6,515 verified phishes spoofing the brand. Bank of America (5,727) and Fifth Third Bank (4,191) rounded out the top five.

The report also revealed that the US hosts the most phishing attacks, tallying about 30 per cent of the total. South Korea and China ranked second and third, respectively.

"Most of the phishes that we get submitted tend to be hosted in the US, even if the domain names end in different country codes," David Ulevitch, chief executive officer of OpenDNS, which operates PhishTank, said. "The phishing site is typically hosted by a residential cable or DSL company based in America."

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