The good news, according to domain registrar and online intelligence analysts VeriSign: online commerce dollar volume rose 88 percent during the 2004 holiday season. The better news: over half of the world’s phishing attempts and captures were based outside the United States.
VeriSign’s fifth Internet Security Intelligence Briefing, released February 28, said 2004 holiday season shopping online grew 39 percent over 2003, with game stores (96 percent), gift shops (89 percent), charities (79 percent), and digital music (59 percent) all well over 50 percent in growth over 2003, with consumer electronics shopping online falling by 27 percent.
The company also said its analysis showed the Monday after Thanksgiving proving the peak online shopping day, replacing “Black Friday,” which remains the year’s biggest shopping day for brick-and-mortar sellers.
“There are many factors contributing to the continued strong growth in e-commerce and the dramatic increases during the holiday season,” VeriSign said, announcing the new report. “These include increased customer confidence in shopping online, growing broadband/high speed Internet access penetration across the United States, availability of more inexpensive goods on the Internet, and an increasing number of rural consumers shopping online for goods they cannot buy locally.”
Even better was that 58 percent of the world’s phishing capture sites were found outside the United States from October through January, compared to 37 percent in the first half of 2004, which VeriSign said was due mostly to better efforts at closing down U.S. capture sites and the relative difficulty in getting them abroad.
But the bad news was the U.S. was still the world’s top source of Internet security incidents, at 79 percent, well above Canada (5.7 percent), Taiwan (2.6 percent), Korea (2.5 percent), and Britain (2.4 percent).
“Usage and e-commerce continue to grow dramatically in spite of security threats, reflecting the confidence merchants and consumers have when appropriate security protections are taken," said VeriSign vice president and general manager for security services Judy Lin in a statement. "The report shows that with the right intelligence and control afforded by (security) technologies…businesses and end users can safely take advantage of the Internet's full potential."
