New Delhi: Facing over 1,200 phishing attacks every month, India is the fifth most targeted country for such attacks, a report by leading IT services firm EMC said.

Globally, 1,81,600 phishing attacks were identified in the first half of 2013, with May witnessing the maximum 36,966 attacks, says the Anti-Fraud Command Center's (AFCC) fraud report for the first half of 2013, prepared by EMC's security division RSA.

Phishing is the illegal practice of sending e-mails, purporting to be from legitimate companies or organizations in order to lure individuals to reveal personal information.

"RSA announced the findings of its H1 2013 Fraud Report, ranking India fifth most targeted country for phishing attacks, receiving 4 per cent of the total attack volume," EMC said in a statement.

The US was the most targeted country, accounting 52 per cent of the attacks followed by the UK (11 per cent), South Africa (6 per cent) and Canada (5 per cent), it added.

"RSA identified 1,81,600 phishing attacks in H1 2013 globally with May witnessing maximum number of 36,966 attacks. This is 27 per cent increase in the total number of global phishing attacks as compared to the month of April," it said.

News on hacking of over 40,000 Facebook accounts in the month of May contributed to the attack surge in the first half of 2013, it added.

AFCC is a 24x7 war-room that detects, tracks, blocks and shuts down phishing, pharming and Trojan attacks perpetrated by online fraudsters.

RSA is a provider of security, risk and compliance management solutions for business acceleration.

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