ATHENS – Showing how susceptible online users are to scamsters, Greece ranked 5th in the world among the countries with the most phishing attacks in the third quarter of 2021, and being preyed upon.

That was according to data from the Outseer Fraud and Payments Report analyzed by Atlas VPN released on Jan. 26 that said 45 percent of fraud attacks worldwise abuse brand names, as happened in Greece when people were duped by a site.

Cybercriminals went after Greek businesses and organizations in 7 percent of all phishing attacks that took place worldwide from July through September of 2021, the report showed.

The first four countries were the United States (21 percent), Spain (14 percent), South Africa (12 percent) and The Philippines (9 percent.) The US was the favorite target because of the larger numbers of major corporations.

The Outseer report presents an analysis of fraud attacks and consumer fraud data, showing how widespread the use of malware is to infect computers and phones and with phishing.

That is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.