Phishing souring the relationship between French consumers and brands

Phishing, that highly deceptive and dangerous practice that far too many internet users have fallen victim to, is as troublesome in France as elsewhere. In fact, there’s evidence that the phishing phenomenon is souring the relationship between brands and their consumers. According to a study just released by French email protection firm Verifrom, 90% of consumers already state that they either distrust somewhat or completely emails coming from brands. Not an encouraging finding given that email is a principal way that most brands stay in touch with their customers. But not surprising given than nearly 78% state that they’ve been exposed to phishing and 30% have a good chance to fall victim to a phishing scheme.  Even a decent percentage of techies claim to have fallen victim to phishing at least once.
Brands, obviously, have been putting in place solutions to help deter phishing in their names, but unfortunately half of French consumers don’t feel they do enough and have of consumers believe they’re fairly powerless to substantively combat the problem. And this perception doesn’t change depending on the category (ie ecommerce, energy, public services, banking & insurance, music & video, etc).
The biggest ‘brands’/entities in France  that are most cited by internet users as falling prey to phishing are EDF, which leads most others by a mile, then the french tax authority, followed by Paypal, the CAF (Caisse d’Allocaitons Familiales – social aid for families), and Orange.
How to address a problem which seems to show no signs of abating?  90% of internet users surveyed stated that having some type of email verification solution in place would help to restore their confidence in the brand and half even stated that it would help restore the image of brands overall.