The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is the financial institution most targeted by phishing fraudsters, according to anti-spam outfit Clearmymail which is reporting a quadrupling in the number of spam attacks aimed at UK Internet users.
A review of all the spam and fraudulent phishing e-mails blocked by Clearmymail in the second quarter found a massive 42.78% targeted RBS customers, up from just 0.02% in the previous quarter.
Abbey was the second most targeted bank with 18.28%, followed by Halifax on 9.77% and Natwest on 7.06%.
What's more, Clearmymail says the average amount of spam blocked per customer quadrupled between the first and second quarters, from 8156 in Q1 to 30,846 in Q2.
The figures also show that the majority of spam targeted at Brits - 19.65% - now originates in the UK. This is up from 3.97% in the previous quarter.
The US accounts for 12.57% of spam sent to UK e-mail accounts, although this is down from 19.53% in Q1. Uruguay accounts for 7.4% of spam targeted at Brits, with Turkey at 7.22% and Italy at 3.98%.
Clearmymail says the high UK figure suggests phishers are getting more targeted and local.
Dan Field, managing director, Clearmymail, says: "These statistics are becoming increasingly worrying and for the average amount of spam blocked per person to have nearly quadrupled in the last three months suggests that action desperately needs to be taken."
Last month UK payments association Apacs released figures showing there were more than 20,000 reported phishing incidents in the first half of 2008, an increase of more than 180% from the same period last year.