Over 80% of scam emails globally targeted Japan in May: security firm
Over 80 percent of email scams with identifiable senders targeted Japanese recipients in May, as advances in generative artificial intelligence allow the use of more natural language, a U.S. cybersecurity firm said, Kyodo reports.
Of the record-high 770 million scam emails sent globally in May, Proofpoint analyzed 240 million containing sender data and found 81.4 percent of those targeted Japanese speakers, the company said in a recent report.
"Fraudulent emails were easily spotted previously because of unnatural wording, but the advancement of generative AI has helped produce natural sentences, enabling them to break through the language barrier," Proofpoint Japan's Yukimi Sota said.
There were 100 million to 200 million such emails sent each month before 2025, but that figure surged to more than 500 million per month this year, the company said.
Many are phishing emails sent from addresses posing as securities firms. They guide recipients to fake websites that are used to steal personal information such as email addresses and passwords, giving hackers the ability to hijack accounts.
If corporate email and security credentials are stolen, it could give attackers access to unauthorized internal communication systems on which further phishing emails can be sent.
According to Sota, the majority of email scams targeting Japan used a specific cybercrime program. The number of such emails plunged during the Lunar New Year from late January to early February.
"Their unprecedented scale and sophisticated methods raise a possibility of an organized attack led by a foreign government," Sota said, calling on Japanese companies to enhance cybersecurity measures such as adopting multi-factor authentication.
Recall that Japan saw an 8.3 percent increase in the number of police-recognized cyber and phone scams in 2023, with the 19,033 cases the most in 10 years, while the number of people linked to overseas-based crime rings was the highest ever seen.
