The Internet Crime Complaint Center's report for 2009
Introduction
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in USA started as a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and is focused on cyber crime.
IC3's report for 2009 has just been published, and is interesting reading. Not the least when comparing the actual submitted complaints to what is focused upon in the media.
The report is from the US and thereby does not, nor intends to, represent "Internet crime in the world". However, the results should be interesting and presumably to some extent relevant also for other countries and regions. One may however, assume that the numbers of perpetrators as well as victims from the US are somewhat overrepresented in this report compared to what would have been seen in similar reports from other parts of the world.
A few "highlights" from the report
The number of submitted complaints in 2009 represents a 22% increase compared to the previous year.
The total amount of money lost on the other hand, shows a substantial increase from the previous year, and reaches an all time high of USD 560 million. More interesting even, is that this represents an 111% increase compared to 2008.
The report analyses the losses involved, and interesting data is presented, like:
- The median (as opposed to average) monetary loss was USD 575.
- In the cases where perpetrator information was submitted, 77% were male.
- Among those who complained, the males were also slightly overrepresented; more striking was that nearly two thirds were between 30 and 50 years old.
- Male complainants lost in average more than 50% more than females.
The top three reported offences were:
- Non-delivery of merchandise and/or payment (20%)
- Identity theft (14%)
- Credit card fraud (10%)
Caveat regarding interpretation
One should in particular take into consideration that this report and the statistics presented above, represent the complaints reported to IC3. For various reasons organizations and individuals may choose not to report when they are victimized of cyber crime. How this would affect the abovementioned statistics compared to what is the real situation, is in itself an interesting analysis.
Note also that the reporting system was changed in 2009. This might have an effect regarding comparing with the previous year.
More information
The full report - The Internet Crime Complaint Center's 2009 Internet Crime Report is available as a PDF file from this link (opens a separate browser window).
The report also provides detailed examples of techniques used, like "Hitman scams", "Astrological Reading Scams", "Fake Pop-up Ads for Anti-Virus Software", and more.
Previous years' reports are available from IC3's web site.
