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. "

Comments

... and the number 1 "Internet Crime"

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Internet Explorer 7.

*rimshot*

Skewed results

[orclevegam]

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.

Re:Incredible, though not surprising.

[Bicx]

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!

Bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I notice

[i kan reed]

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?

There is no such thing as "Internet Crime"

[vivaoporto]

There is no such thing as "Internet Crime", and the data presented by this article, according to themselves, is not significant. From TFA:

The feds caution that these figures don't represent a scientific sample of just how much Net crime is out there. They note, for example, that the high number of auction fraud complaints is due, in part, to eBay and other big E-commerce outfits offering customers direct links to the IC3 website. And it's tough to measure what may be the Web's biggest scourge, child porn, simply by complaints.

Just take a look at the Top 10 list:

2006 Top 10 IC3 Complaint Categories (Percent of Total Complaints Received)

• Auction Fraud (44.9%)
• Non-delivery (19.0%)
• Check Fraud (4.9%)
• Credit/Debit Card Fraud (4.8%)
• Computer Fraud (2.8%)
• Confidence Fraud (2.2%)
• Financial Institutions Fraud (1.6%)
• Identity Theft (1.6%)
• Investment Fraud (1.3%)
• Child Pornography (1.0%)

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.

Re:I'm still waiting for that . . .

[Threni]

> Is that considered auction fraud or non-delivery?

It's an intelligence test. I'm sure the result will show up shortly.

Re:I'm still waiting for that . . .

[spamking]

A+++++++ Excellent poster. Hope to read more from this guy!! Highly recommended.