By Doctor Security
A couple of weeks ago, The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), released the 2009 Annual Report about fraudulent activity on the Internet.
The stats are alarming. Reported cybercrime complaints jumped 22% from the year before and the cost of online fraud nearly doubled to $560 million. This report features “information related to the volume and scope of complaints, complainant and perpetrator characteristics, geographical data, most frequently reported scams and results of IC3 referrals.”
Peter Trahon, Section Chief of the FBI's Cyber Division is quoted in the report press release, offering the advice that all reputable security vendors echo: “Computer users are encouraged to have up-to-date security protection on their devices and evaluate email solicitations they receive with a healthy skepticism—if something seems too good to be true, it likely is.”
In the same press release, NW3C Director Donald Brackman says, “The figures contained in this report indicate that criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet. They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers. Internet crime is evolving in ways we couldn't have imagined just five years ago.”