The latest YouGov survey has revealed that 23% of people believe their ISP or email service provider is most responsible for protecting them against phishing attacks. Phishing is slang for an email scam that attempts to defraud consumers of their personal information by pretending to have been sent by a trustworthy entity.

Just 26% of respondents felt that they themselves held the most responsibility while 17% blamed the senders ISP. The dynamic nature of such fraud often makes it difficult to prevent, although THUS Group's (Demon Internet) Product Director, Nigel Stevens, feels that more could be done:


Unfortunately "accurate" protection is somewhat of a myth and can easily trap legitimate mail too, consequently the best defence has to be education. Simple things, such as hovering the mouse cursor over URL's in the e-mail to see whether they're from a legitimate domain, can make the world of difference.

Cloudmark, which sponsored the study, has uploaded some tips of its own:
http://www.cloudmark.com/desktop/backtoschool/