Attackers take advantage of customer conveniences to create fake bank cards.

U.S. banks are putting customer convenience ahead of security and, in the process, making it much easier for online “phishers” to create counterfeit bank cards, according to a Gartner report. And with the Internet now a common source of stolen account information, phishers are accounting for a growing portion of the estimated $2.75 billion in annual losses that bank card abuse is costing U.S. banks, the Stamford, Connecticut, research firm said.

Though U.S. banks are aware that both bank card fraud and phishing–the criminal practice of tricking people into entering confidential information into fake Web sites–are problems, the link between these two phenomena is not always well understood, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner vice president and research director.

Read the complete article by Robert McMillan on Yahoo News.