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Broadband users are being advised to be more cautious when they are online. This is due to phishing scams whereby phishers try to scam people into providing their financial information by posing as a trustworthy organisation such as a bank.

The UK's payments industry, Apacs, have warned that they believe there has been a 200 per cent increase in the number of reported cases of phishing incidences in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the same period last year.

Broadband users are being advised to look out for emails that appear to be from their bank asking for private financial information.

Apacs have said that people need to remember that banks would not send emails asking you to disclose private financial information such as your pin number, login details or complete passwords. Therefore, if you were to receive an email asking you to do this, it will be a phishing attempt and you should ignore it.

Although there are many people who do take appropriate measures in an attempt to avoid phishing risks, Apacs believes that there are around one in five broadband users who do not take these measures and will increase the risk against them by opening suspicious emails for example.

The security action group Anti-Phishing Working Group suggest that people should be suspicious of all such emails, regardless of whether they are addressed personally to them or not.

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Broadband users are being advised to look out for emails that appear to be from their bank asking for private financial information.

One in five broadband users is believed not to take measures to protect themselves against phishing.

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