$3.2 Billion Lost to Phishing in 2007

U.S. consumers were scammed out of roughly $3.2 billion over the past year from phishing scams, a significant increase over last year, according to a survey released this week.

The estimate, produced by Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc., was based on a survey of 4,500 online adults. The findings indicate that despite a great deal of media attention to the phishing epidemic, the message still isn't getting through to a fairly constant percentage of Internet users.

From the survey, which examined consumer experiences with phishing attacks in the year ending Aug. 2007: "Of consumers who received phishing e-mails in 2007, 3.3 percent say they lost money because of the attack, compared with 2.3 percent who lost money in 2006, and 2.9 percent who did so in 2005, according to similar Gartner surveys during those years."