Press Release
POSTINI REPORTS SIZZLING SUMMER PHISHING SEASON
July Phishing Attempts Reach Highest Level Ever
REDWOOD CITY , CA , August 2, 2005 — Postini, the industry's leading provider of email security and management services, today announced that phishing attempts in July had reached their highest levels since the company started tracking for this type of fraudulent email. Postini processed over 14 billion emails in July and found that the number of phishing instances totaled 19,282,136, a 16 percent increase compared to June.
Last month, Postini had already announced an alarming growth rate in the number of phishing attempts. The company had recorded 16,667,444 phishing emails, the second-highest level ever recorded at that time.
Phishing is a scam in which the perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking emails appearing to come from legitimate e-commerce sites in an effort to obtain personal and financial information from the recipient. With consumers' personal information, tech-criminals then commit credit-card fraud, identity theft and even perform unauthorized bank account transfers.
"Phishing scams have been growing in number and sophistication," said Andrew Lochart, senior director of marketing at Postini. "Postini's complete email boundary protection stops phishing attempts by providing security at the connection level to prevent threats from ever reaching the corporate network."
In contrast to increased phishing, the number of virus infected messages for the month of July decreased by 20 percent compared to the previous month. This was the second consecutive month that the number of virus-infected messages decreased. Postini prevented a total of 60 million virus instances from entering corporate networks. Postini also protected its customers from more than 23 million directory harvest attacks (DHAs), an 8 percent decrease compared to June's 25 million DHAs. Spam rates remained stable, representing 88 percent of the total number of email messages sent. Only 12 percent of all messages were legitimate email.
The top ten viruses for July were:
| Virus Name | Quantity Detected |
| mytob | 35,552,233 |
| netsky | 8,928,004 |
| bankfraud | 4,820,534 |
| mime | 4,745,732 |
| bagle | 2,323,707 |
| zafi | 1,129,036 |
| mydoom | 1,103,801 |
| lovgate | 708,111 |
| klez | 182,724 |
| bagz | 173,268 |
Postini's StatTrak™ is available to users at www.postini.com/stats and provides the most up-to-date statistics on the latest viruses, spam and DHA attacks.
About Postini
Postini, the global leader in secure email boundary services, stops spam and viruses, enforces policy compliance and improves email manageability. Postini's managed service model stops threats before they reach your network. For more information contact Postini at 866-767-8461, or visit http://www.postini.com.
Marty Tacktill
Senior Director, Worldwide Public Relations
650.482.3197
650.482.3109 FAX
marty@postini.com
Kimberly Canedo
Neale-May & Partners
650.328.5555 ext. 278
kcanedo@nealemay.com
