Throughout 2009, the battle for top position in terms of phishing target took place between ebay and Chase Bank, but Avira claimed that Chase Bank had been the top most phished brand.

But in December 2009, the situation got reverse and new brand took the top slot. PayPal became the most attacked brand, leaving behind Chase Bank and eBay. Avira stated that this change was due to the Christmas festival and high usage of PayPal in the December month.

Besides PayPal, Chase Bank and eBay, several other brands also experienced phishing attacks in 2009. The security firm states that American Express occupied the fourth position with 5202 attacks, followed by the Bank of America which recorded 4540 attacks during 2009.

Abbey Bank stood at sixth place, IRS at seventh place and HSBC Bank at eighth place on the list, with 3978 attacks, 3712 attacks and 2762 attacks respectively. Citibank, with 2265 attacks, and Facebook, with 2217 attacks, stood at the ninth and tenth place respectively.

Except Facebook, all the brands on Top Ten List have connection with the finance sector or shopping. It is certainly an important trend that hackers were able to create as many phishing websites alone in December 2009 that made PayPal the leading brand on the list.

Avira researchers have claimed that the data (statistics) gathered by other security firms might vary slightly, but it was possible that the top bands listed by Avira would be the same on others' lists.

To evade these phishing attacks, the security experts stated that users should be safe in the winter holiday season if they followed certain precautionary measures - such as always write the address of online banks in browser, avoid clicking on links in unsolicited e-mails. Above all, users of PayPal should be extremely careful at the moment.