A new website has been built to educate British online consumers about the dangers of phishing scams.

The Phishing IQ Test has been set up with faux emails from banks and e-commerce vendors, and users are invited to judge whether they are legitimate or not.

A results page reveals the correct answers and gives detailed information on how to identify a phishing attack.

"Whilst we recognise that phishing has been a US-driven phenomenon, we are increasingly seeing UK-focused scams which use a different kind of language, and by which people in the UK are more easily tricked," said Vanessa Wade, managing director of email security vendor MailFrontier which set up the site.

"We developed the test specifically for the UK, as English is still the main language being used by phishers. We hope that this test gives people more confidence when deleting, ignoring or reporting cases of phishing in the UK in future."

Over 300,000 people have viewed the American version of the site since its launch in June last year. A worrying 96 per cent of those people got at least one of the questions wrong.