Net crime loss currently booming

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» 16 March 2010

Based on the reported numbers, the cyber crime loss in the United States doubled from the 2008 recorded amount of 265 million US dollars to last year’s 560 million.

According to a report made on Friday by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), an agency supported by FBI, there had been about 336, 655 reported crimes in the year 2009. This is an evident increase of 22.3 percent from the previous year.

Assorted methods are flourishing today

The records show that approximately 16 percent of the total numbers of crimes are connected to scammers who use FBI in their scheme. On the other hand, about 11.9 percent accounts for undelivered or unpaid purchases. The latter is considered as the second most common cyber crime up-to-date.

The third widespread scam, which is 9.8 percent of the total amount, involves the advanced fee fraud scams. In addition to those stated earlier, identity theft and overpayment fraud scams also became prevalent in the online community.

Government fights on behalf of the victims

Of all the complaints, with regards to the growing net crimes, 146,633 were directed to the authorities. The ones responsible in handling these issues are the local, the state, or the federal law enforcement agencies.

The complaints, which are turned over to the government department are chiefly about the losses of certain amount of money. This evident loss may be caused by one of the following methods: undelivered or unpaid goods (19.9%), identity theft (14.1%), credit card fraud (10.4%), auction fraud (10.3%), and hacking of systems (7.9%).

If the amount of loss will be summed up, the average sum for all the referred cases will be about 3,200 US dollars for investment fraud, 2,500 US dollars for overpayment fraud, and 1,500 US dollars for advance fee fraud.

Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) was able to collate various circumstances related to the ones previously stated. And, other forms of crimes became popular during the year 2009 as well and these include: hitman scams, astrological reading frauds, job site hustles, and the advertisements for the bogus antivirus programs more commonly known as the scareware.

Year 2009 marked the height of net crimes

On May 2000, Internet Crime Complaint Center was established and this organization was able to release reports yearly since then. Based on their reports, there was an apparent escalation in the amount of money lost from online scams. A slow trend of growth in the number of cases was noted years after the agency’s foundation. But then, a great increase happened in 2009.

Popular businesses as chosen targets

According to the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, giant businesses suffered great deficits of about 120 million US dollars during the later part of 2009 due to the rampant cyber crimes. This had been caused by phishing attacks and Trojan-based online banking scams.

Based on the statement of David Nelson during the RSA Conference earlier this month, the small business had an accounted loss of 25 million US dollars in contrast to the losses of the highly-reputable businesses.

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