Using crypto against Phishing, Spoofing and Spamming...

[John Levine]

>But is it so harmful?  How much money is lost in a typical phishing
>attack against a large US bank, or PayPal?

A lot.  According to people at the anti-phishing conference earlier
this year, six-figure losses are common, and seven-figure not unknown.

The kind of phishes we all see, trolling for credit card or ISP
account info with spam, are the lowest level kind.  The serious ones
carefully choose their targets, e.g., ebay sellers with very high
positive ratings, or people who live outside the US and have large US
bank accounts, and are more likely to send hundreds of messages than
millions.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web

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