Slashdot Mirror
Top 10 Internet Crimes of '06
An anonymous reader notes that "The Bad Guys blog at USNews.com offers a look at the top ten Internet crimes of 2006. The federal study cited draws on over 200,000 complaints to US law enforcement and regulatory agencies. Top crime: auction fraud, followed by other online rip-offs. "
*rimshot*
The article mentions that the results are probably skewed by the likes of E-Bay providing direct links to file complaints, and it also doesn't say if the complaints were ever followed up on or not. This is probably a list of all complaints, rather than those that were shown to be legitimate.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
eBay is an awesome, secure site, and I really doubt there are that many cases of auction fraud. Where else could I have bought Intel's new 7-core processor? It's arriving sometime this week. w00t!
My list of the The top ten internet crimes:
1. Windows Vista
2. Microsoft Office
3. RIAA lawsuits
4. Slashdot "editors"
5. Web sites with blinkey flashey ads and two paragraphs per page for a grand total of fifteen blinkey flashey pages I could read in less than two minutes except I have to wait for all the bullshit to load before I can read the next pair of paragraphs. There is a damned good reason they got rid of the <blink> tag, you know!
6. DMCA. The law itself is a crime
7. Bono Act (AKA "Steamboat Willie Preservation Act"). Again, the law itself is the crime.
8. Jack Thompson
9. Sony's rootkit
10. Cowboy Neal
That child pornography accounts for 1% of all internet crime. Yet, somehow, this seems to be the only crime I've heard of the FBI cracking down on. Is this because of skewed news reporting? Or is it because of the relative severity of child pornography? Or is it "thinkofthechildren"ism?
Just take a look at the Top 10 list:
Internet is only the communication channel used by the crooks, all the crimes depicted there are good old fashioned real life crimes. Being perpetrated via Internet is only a detail that should be irrelevant when categorizing crimes. What I would really like to see is the ratio of these same crimes perpetrated in real life vs. via internet. That would really be insightful and newsworthy.
> Is that considered auction fraud or non-delivery?
It's an intelligence test. I'm sure the result will show up shortly.
6. DMCA. The law itself is a crime
7. Bono Act (AKA "Steamboat Willie Preservation Act"). Again, the law itself is the crime. I was looking for those in the article before I read your comment, but I didn't see one instance of any form of "pirate" or "infringe" in the article. So is there a reason that copyright infringement, such as through peer-to-peer file sharing networks, is not one of the top 10 Internet crimes of 2006? There is a damned good reason they got rid of the <blink> tag, you know! O RLY? Gecko supports the <blink> element and even has a corresponding CSS attribute for it: text-decoration: blink . Luckily, blinking text in recent Gecko is easier to read than blinking text in older browsers because recent Gecko blinks with a duty cycle of 75 percent on, unlike older browsers that used 50 percent on.
A+++++++ Excellent poster. Hope to read more from this guy!! Highly recommended.
Why isn't spam on the list? It is a crime in many places to send certain kinds of spam such as forged headers. I would think this would the most common type of cyber crime.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I've learned about the tragedy of being stuck with $20 million in your bank account and not being able to access it without assistance from a dear kind sir like myself, whom you have the fortune of soliciting in the most urgent case.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Surely Myspace has to be considered some sort of ongoing internet crime against decent taste and humanity in general.
Piracy is not even in the top ten. Because copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal one.