Security software specialist Trusteer has warned that while only slightly more than 1 percent of online banking customers end up at phishing sites, about half of those people wind up exposing their login and password information as a result.

“That may seem like a negligible number of affected users, but considering that online banking services have millions of customers around the globe, the total amount of involved losses still adds up,” writes eWeek’s Matthew Hines. “The researchers found that on average, only 12.5 out of one million customers from a given bank fall for each new phishing campaign. However, Trusteer estimates that even this seemingly low phishing success rate currently costs banks as much as $9.4 million per year per million users.”

“The company based its findings on data gathered over a three-month period via a browser plug-in distributed to some three million e-banking users who are customers of 10 sizable U.S. and European banks,” Hines writes.

Click here to read the eWeek story.