According to Tacoma-based Internet Identity (ID), text-to-phone phishing attacks (often called “smishing”) dropped dramatically during the first quarter of 2010.

The company’s first quarter Phising Trends Report shows that smishing attacks were down 62 percent from January to March, compared to the previous quarter. However, in spite of the drop, the number of credit unions being impersonated in text-to-phone cases stayed the same, meaning credit unions were the most targeted by industry.

Other findings of ID’s fourth quarterly phishing report:

• Cyber criminals increasingly posed as relief organizations to launch phishing attacks, claiming to help victims of recent disasters, like the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.
• More and more, phishing was used to carry out Internet Domain Name System hijackings, specifically with China’s biggest search engine Baidu.com (similar to the December 2009 hijacking of Twitter).
• There was a significant reduction in the number of phishing attacks carried out by Avalanche, one of the most prolific cyber criminal gangs (responsible for two-thirds of the world’s phishing attacks in the second half of 2009).
• Non-Avalanche phishing attacks rose 14 percent from the previous quarter.
• The major share of phishing volume moved to targeting money transfer sites.