Escrow Trust

The 2008 report on cybercrime IC3 just released, and the news is not good: cyber crime is still rising. This, of course, is hardly surprising since the cyber criminal is more intelligent and more, day by day, while law enforcement continues to catch up.

What is somewhat surprising, however, is that Internet auction fraud, which was the crime online as indicated in the last two years, no longer leading the pack, but at 25.5 % of all reports, it performs a second, but rather the most crimes reported online in 2008 is non-delivery of goods and / or payment, which comprises 32.9% of all reported cases of fraud Internet.

IC3

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began operations May 8, 2000, the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to serve vehicle to receive, process and transmit complaints against cybercrime.

IC3 is used and continues to serve the wider community law enforcement, including federal, state and local agencies, and since its inception, IC3 has received complaints about the full range of computer crimes, including Online fraud (in all its forms), intellectual property rights issues, intrusions (hacking), economic espionage (theft of trade secrets), child pornography, the international money laundering, identity theft, and a growing list of additional cybercrime.

The 2008 report of crime on the Internet is its eighth edition.

Figures

From Jan. 1 2008 - 31 December 2008, 275,284 complaints received by IC3 online. This is a (33.1%) compared to 2007, which saw 206,884 complaints online.

Of all complaints received, IC3 referred 72,940 of them to federal, state, local agencies and law enforcement around the country for further consideration. The vast majority of these cases were fraudulent in nature and involved a financial loss from the complainant.

The total financial losses of all cases of fraud were referred to 264.6 million dollars with a median loss of $ 931.00 dollars per complaint. This is up from 239.1 million dollars in total losses reported in 2007. Other significant findings related to the analysis of the following references:

Undelivered

goods not delivered and / or payment has been by far the most reported offense, comprising 32.9% of complaints referred to it is an increase of 32.1% compared to the level of 2007 non-delivery of goods and / or payment reported to IC3.

Internet auction scams, and other

The Internet auction fraud accounted for 25.5% of referred complaints. Fraudulent debit card, up 9.0% of referred complaints. confidence fraud, computer fraud, check fraud, and around the Nigerian fraud letter seven main categories of complaints referred to law enforcement agencies during the year.

Access Method

E-mail (74.0%) and web pages (28.9%) were the two main channels that contact was fraudulent.

Fighting Back

According to the IC3, the best way to guard against scams on the Internet is easier to stay informed. Keeping abreast of the latest scams on the Internet allow Internet users to recognize and report these scams instead of losing money or their identity information in one of them. To learn about the latest scams, we recommend that you periodically check the IC3, the FBI and FTC websites for the latest updates.

In addition, the IC3 and its partners launched a public website, www.lookstoogoodtobetrue.com which memory consumers about various consumer alerts, tips and trends in fraud.

Fight against non-delivery

The IC3 made specific recommendations on the fight against non-delivery of goods or pay.