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More than 5 million Americans lost funds to phishing attacks between September and a year earlier, an increase of 39% from 3.6 million consumers who lost funds to phishing the previous year, according to a report released this week by Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. Gartner based its findings on an online survey of 3,985 adults conducted by Ipsos North America in September. The average loss to phishing was $351, down 60% from $866 the previous year. Scammed consumers recovered 56% of their losses last year, mostly from their banks, PayPal and other financial services providers, Gartner says. That was down 8 percentage points from 64% of losses recovered in 2007. PayPal was the most-common target of phishing attempts, representing 52% of phishing e-mails survey respondents reported receiving, and up one percentage point from 51% of phishing emails reported the previous year. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they had received phishing emails masquerading as official bank communications, down 6 percentage points from 33% the previous year.
