Phishing has been around for a while and it is nowhere near becoming a thing of the past, according to the latest report from the APWG.

The industry consortium released a report at its conference in Puerto Rico this week that said phishing websites proliferated at record speed in the first half of 2012. 

And while the uptime of phishing websites–phony sites that steal credentials for later use by cyber thieves–dropped, meaning they were spotted and taken down more quickly, more sites than ever are appearing, the APWG said.

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"Phishers seem to be concentrating their efforts on compromising legitimate websites using automated attack tools, or purchasing access to them on the burgeoning underground market," said Rod Rasmussen, chief technology officer of Internet Identity in Tacoma, Wash. The study  found that there were 12% more phishing attacks in last six month of 2011. 

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