Google, UC Berkeley researchers find 27.8% of phishing victims use Gmail

Jessica Kim Cohen -

Half of phishing victims use Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail as their email provider, according to recent research led by Google.

With partners from UC Berkeley and the nonprofit International Computer Science Institute, Google researchers identified compromised email credentials found on black market forums between March 2016 and March 2017. They analyzed 788,000 potential victims of off-the-shelf keyloggers; 12.4 million potential victims of phishing kits; and 1.9 billion usernames and passwords exposed via data breaches.

The researchers found phishing kits, which trick users into submitting credentials to fake login pages, represented a particularly damaging form of cyberattack. These fake login pages often capture user credentials like usernames, passwords, recovery questions, phone numbers, device identifiers and geolocations.

Here are the top 10 email providers used by victims of phishing kits.

1. Gmail.com: 27.8 percent of phishing victims

2. Yahoo.com: 12 percent

3. Hotmail.com: 11.3 percent

4. Outlook.com: 1 percent

5. Mail.ru: 0.8 percent

6. Live.com: 0.6 percent

7. Yahoo.co.in: 0.5 percent

7. Orange.fr: 0.5 percent

9. Ymail.com: 0.4 percent

9. Hotmail.fr: 0.4 percent

Other: 44.7 percent

To access the full study, click here.

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