According to an Internet crime report released by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)Monday, Internet crime is up 22.3 percent this year as compared to last year. Topping the list -- non-deliverable merchandise and/or payment.
The report shows that IC3 received hundreds of thousands of complaints nationally in 2009 -- to be exact, IC3's Website received 336,655 complaint submissions. Of those complaints, 146,663 were referred to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies around the country for further consideration. The report states that the vast majority of referred cases contained elements of fraud and involved a financial loss by the complainant.
IC3 covers many different kinds of complaints, ranging from fraud and non-fraud categories, including auction fraud, non-delivery of merchandise, credit card fraud, computer intrusions, spam/unsolicited email, and child pornography.
Email scams represented 16.6 percent of all complaints submitted to IC3 in 2009. Non-deliverable merchandise and/or payment represented 19.9 percent of all complaints; identity theft represented 14.3 percent, while credit card fraud complaints accounted for 10.4 percent. Also noted in the report, complaints containing perpetrator information showed 76.6 percent were male and half resided in one of the following states: California, Florida, New York, the District of Columbia, Texas, and Washington. In addition to FBI scams, popular scam trends for 2009 included hitman scams , astrological reading frauds, economic scams, job site scams, and fake pop-up ads for antivirus software.
IC3 gives the victims of cybercrime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the local, state, and federal level, IC3 provides a central referral mechanism for complaints involving Internet-related crimes.
~wavy.com
