VeriSign is out with a new report this morning, stating that 88 percent of Web users in the U.S. can’t identify phishing sites. Phishing sites are spoofed sites of legitimate sites that aim to trick users into giving up information.

While the VeriSign numbers sound disturbing, they’re actually an improvement from data that I reported on in 2005. Back then, I wrote a story about a report that stated that only 4 percent of users can spot a phished e-mail 100 percent of the time.

In the new 2009 report from VeriSign, they peg a few common areas that users miss. One of them is a misspelling in sites name, the other is a padlock in the browser address bar. The browser padlock of course is a sign that a site is SSL secured (and, oh yeah, VeriSign sells SSL certificates)…

[Continue reading this blog post at Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner]