 | According to the 2008 Internet Crime Report, the total dollar loss from referred cases of fraud in 2008 was $264.6 million, up from $239.1 million in total reported losses in 2007. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 275,284 complaint submissions from January 1, 2008 – December 31, 2008, which represents a 33.1% increase when compared to 2007. The complaints were primarily related to issues on the Internet.
These complaints were composed of many different fraud types such as auction fraud, non-delivery, and credit/debit card fraud as well as non-fraudulent complaints such as computer intrusions, spam/unsolicited e-mail, and child pornography. The vast majority of cases involved a financial loss on the part of the complainant with a median dollar loss of $931.00 per complaint. Non-delivered merchandise and/or payment was, by far, the most reported offense, comprising 32.9% of referred complaints. Internet auction fraud accounted for 25.5% of referred complaints. Credit/debit card fraud made up 9.0% of referred complaints. The highest median losses were found among check fraud ($3,000), confidence fraud ($2,000), Nigerian (west African, 419, Advance Fee) letter fraud ($1,650).
The majority of reported perpetrators (66.1%) were from the United States; however, a significant number of perpetrators where also located in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Canada, China, and South Africa.
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One-third of complainants resided in one of the four most populated states: California, Florida, Texas, and New York. While most were from the United States (92.4%), IC3 received a number of complaints from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, and France. E-mail (74.0%) and webpages (28.9%) were the two primary mechanisms by which the fraudulent contact took place. Males lost more money than females (ratio of $1.69 dollars lost per male to every $1.00 dollar lost per female). This may be a function of both online purchasing differences by gender and the type of fraudulent schemes by which the individuals were victimized. Proactive strategies and awareness are the best tools to predict victimization
Anyone who utilizes the Internet is susceptible, and IC3 has received complaints from both males and females ranging in age from ten to one hundred years old. Complainants can be found in all fifty states, in dozens of countries worldwide, and have been affected by everything from work-at-home schemes to identity theft. The ability to predict victimization is limited, particularly without the knowledge of other related risk factors, e.g., the amount of Internet usage or experience.
Many organizations agree that prevention strategies along with education and awareness are the major tools to protect individuals.
Easy Solutions is addressing the need to predict and prevent fraud, contrary to most security vendors who have a reactive approach. Easy Solutions’ proactive strategy offers state of the art technologies like Fingerprint Device Authentication and a proprietary engine that learns over time the user’s habits creating a unique profile to assess risk in real-time and at the transaction level.
To get a full copy of the 2008 Internet Crime Report click here
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