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New Study Shows Phishing Not a High Income Business

by Peter Mychalcewycz on January 8, 2009 at 04:07 PM



Those who that think perpetrators of online fraud (phishers) are marauding around St. Tropez in a cigarette boat filled with the money of unsuspecting victims, take heart. They aren't rich after all, according to Slashdot. Well, most of them, anyway.

Phishers are running themselves out of business through oversaturation. The more one phisher works, the less phishing opportunities there are for others. The harder phishers work, the less money they actually make, since they're generally only raking in as much as they're expending for the crime. Funny, huh? Basically, most of them make the same money they would have made at legit jobs had they not turned to a life of cyber crime. For those in developing countries, there may be a slightly higher upside, but, as the study says, "increasing effort is a sign of failure rather than of success." Suckers! [From: Slashdot]

Tags: economics, phishers, phishing, study

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