Cyber-Crime, Internet Fraud on Upswing as Lawmakers Discuss Strategy
Brian Prince writes on eWeek:
While U.S. lawmakers discuss new data security requirements, cyber-thieves are making a killing.More here.
Statistics [.pdf] released by the FBI on Internet fraud contain more bad news. In a report issued earlier this week, the FBI revealed that Internet fraud complaints to the agency by consumers increased more than 33 percent last year. A total of 275,284 complaints were filed in 2008 with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a joint effort between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. In 2007, the IC3 received 206,844 complaints.
Of the total, 72,940 cases of fraud were referred to federal, state and local law enforcement. The total loss suffered by consumers in those cases was $246.6 million, up from $239.1 million in reported losses in 2007. According to the report, the highest median dollar losses came from check fraud, to the tune of $3,000 per incident. Confidence fraud and the well-known West African 419 scams were second and third, with median dollar losses of $2,000 and $1,650, respectively.
posted by Fergie @ 4/02/2009 10:55:00 PM
1 Comments:
Internet fraud is a very serious issue. All of us should know what it is and the ways to combat it. Otherwise, computer thieves will have a free way towards stealing through the internet.
Post a Comment
<< Home