The report said that there has been an 81% increase in consumer orientated phishing attacks, where a third party tries to trick consumers into handing over their login details for vital websites such banks, payment services and credit cards.

The scam usually involves an email being sent to customers asking them to either respond with their account details or click on a link that takes them to a duplicate (but not real) home page.

During the first six months of 2006, 157,477 unique phishing messages were detected, marking an increase of 81% over the previous period. At the same time, spam made up 54% of all monitored e-mail traffic, a slight increase from 50% the previous period.