By Jasmine Osada

Some one in four Singaporeans are vulnerable to online fraud, with many unable to identify the differences between a fake phishing site from a secure one, a survey shown.

The YouGov survey was conducted by computer security firm VeriSign in eight countries globally between May and August this year. Singaporeans were ranked the sixth most vulnerable to online threats, with an 83 per cent risk.

Web users from the UK and the US were ranked as the most vulnerable at 88 per cent. India was ranked the least vulnerable country at 76 per cent.

VeriSign's survey presented participants with two website images, in which they will need to identify which one was the fraudulent phishing site.

Phishing sites are websites set up by cyber criminals to imitate well-known secure sites in an attempt to gather confidential information such as credit card numbers, from victims.

Shoddy spelling on fraudulent websites was most frequently missed by Singaporeans, with 83 per cent failing to identify mistakes.

More than half also missed the missing padlock symbol in the browser's address bar, which if present, indicates that the page is secure.

Older people are also more likely to miss these security indicators, with those over 35 years old being 20 per cent more likely to identify a malicious site as geniune.

Women are also 20 per cent more likely than men to fall prey to phishing sites.

Five tips to distinguish a phishing site from a real site

According to VeriSign, these are the top five indicators that consumers should look out for in order to verify the authenticity of a website.

1. https:// The "s" in https:// means the site is encrypted, so the information you enter is secured. While some phishing sites do have a secured Web address, many do not. Therefore, site visitors should be on the lookout for missing security on sites that should have it.
2. The padlock icon: To be meaningful this icon must appear in the actual browser interface and not inside the content of the page itself.
3. Trust marks: Simple visual cues in the form of popular logos can show that a Web site is authenticated, secured, and from a company that is reputable.
4. Check the Web address: Be suspicious of any site with an unknown domain that contains the name of a well known site in the latter part of the Web address.
5. Green address bar: This signifies that this site has undergone extensive identity authentication so that you can be confident it is the site it claims to be.