Phishing attacks costing banks $350 a pop

Good news for consumers and cost-conscious banks alike: the price of phishing attacks is going down.

According to a report by analyst house Gartner, the average cost of a phishing attack to the US financial services industry was $351 last year - a drop of 60 per cent on the year before.

Consumers meanwhile are recovering more than half of their losses to such attacks, the report found, leaving banks and other financial services companies to feel the brunt of phishers' work.

More than five million US adults lost money to phishing attacks in the year to September 2008 - a year-on-year rise of 40 per cent - indicating phishers are moving to higher volume, lower yield attacks, according to the analyst house.