Who Is Behind the Phishes & Why
The people behind phishing e-mails are scam artists. They literally send out millions of these scam e-mails in the hopes that even a few recipients will act on them and provide their personal and financial information. Anyone with an e-mail address is at risk of being phished. Any e-mail address that has been made public on the Internet (posting in forums, newsgroups, or on a Web site) is more susceptible to phishing as the e-mail address can be saved by spiders that search the Internet and grab as many e-mail addresses as they can. This is why phishing is profitable for scammers; they can cheaply and easily access millions of valid e-mail addresses to send these scams to.