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FBI Reports All-Time High In Internet Fraud Losses
eldavojohn writes "While the number of cases dropped, the amount of money lost to internet fraud reached an all-time high in 2007, a new government report states. 'According to the 2007 Internet Crime Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 206,884 complaints of crimes perpetrated over the Internet during 2007. Of the complaints received, more than 90,000 were referred to law enforcement around the nation, amounting to nearly $240 million in reported losses. This represents a $40 million increase in reported losses from complaints referred to law enforcement in 2006.' The top ruses used by the fraudsters involved pets, romance and secret shoppers. The original report[Large PDF] is available online, and it contains some interesting graphs. One indicates that the two largest types of fraud are Auction Fraud and Non-delivery, which combine for over 60% of all cases. As Computerworld notes, men are more likely to fall for scams than women, and over 30% of losses are between $1,000 and $5,000. The report also contains data about the location of the perpetrators (Nigeria only accounts for 5.7%), age demographics, and contact methods."
Yes but to put it into perspective that still accounts for 60% of the GNP of Nigeria.
Not a big surprise, I'm sure most of us can think of at least one person who's been scammed online.
I have a friend who tried to buy an Xbox 360 for 400+ dollars on Ebay and got scammed when the lady asked him to use a payment site other than paypal.
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So the scammers send you money and ask you to send some of it back.. or to a 3rd party....
who exactly is falling for this? wow.
Is this a new wave of fraud, or a new bunch of stupid victims? I read the article, and saw nothing that didn't scream fraud to anybody with more than a dozen functioning brain cells.
The internet increases efficency of communication, bring more people in contact than ever before.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
Yes, but non-delivery of Nigerian auction purchases - HUGE.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Therefore, the only way to force them to deal with fraud is to "name and shame" those companies by forcing them to release their fraud figures to the public eye.
I myself deal with VoIP security for a company selling converged business solutions and the amount of cover-up of hacking & toll fraud in many corporations is truly astounding.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
fraud profits from dumb/greedy people. sure a few people get scammed on ebay etc, but the big numbers in this come from really stupid people who fall hook line and sinker for 419 scams and the like.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Maybe it's just evolution on a high tech scale?
The funniest part is that several years ago, I had a form of ID theft occur. Someone took out loans and bought property in my name... even with my SSN and all. Who lost my information? Only two candidates were possible. The credit rating agencies, or the government. Nobody else had all the data that was used, since I rarely give specific information and have a tendency to verify who holds what.
:)
Here's the irony. I called Equifax and Experian and after verifying that the information they and I had was correct, they told me I could not receive my own credit report because I did not possess the proper ID to clear myself to them... yet when I went into trucking, they were able to run a credit check on me without so much as a single complaint!
Interesting how the actual OWNER of an identity is not permitted to know what kind of data is warehoused about him or her, but everyone else pays 15 bucks and gets a full detailed copy faxed to them over insecure lines.
I think the bullshit is in the centralized repositories of standardized and aggregated information, not the fact that it is being stolen. That is inevitable when such a heavy prize is dangled at any height. Just imagine what will happen when they tie biometric (unchangeable) data to it.
Witness protection, to say the least, will take on a WHOLE new meaning. Might change name and address and "person number" once you rat on the mafia, but you won't change your DNA or retinal scan
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Overall I think the pet industry is aberrant and should be governed by the CDC.
Namaste
This PDF sounds like a "how to" manual.
Many of the Nigerian scammers have just relocated to other countries, including the USA and Canada. It's not like they've seen the light and renounced their life of crime.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Paypal is one of the least secure financial sites on the internet. Not only are email addresses used as user names, there are no secondary passwords or pins for transactions, no confirmation emails, not even IP tracking or blocking. Then there is the issue of accounts being linked with eBay with passwords often matching. So a hijacked ebay account can easily lead to a hijacked paypal account, and often times the hijacked accounts come with great feedback.
But when paypal or ebay get's compramised, they don't go to the police. They take absolutely no responsibility for their lack of security, and they don't even try to prevent future crimes. 120% of their work goes towards dodging blame and making the victim pay for their losses and do any paper work.
These sites are the perfect accomplices for online criminals. And they profit from it. All those fake handbags and sneakers on ebay still account for millions in listing fees and work towards their usage statistics.
The police need to investigate these crimes and send the bill to the sites where the crime occured. They should also automatically fine the criminals 20x what they stole and charge them for rent for the time they lock them up (which can be as little as 3 days, I don't think this matters).
Credit card companies are also to blame. Now it is easier than ever for buyers to file false claims and get merchandise for free. If any credit card fraud occurs, even in the smallest amounts, these cases need to be processed by law enforcement and fines need to be handed out. Too many people know they can get away with it, and keep repeating the same crime.
The big problem is how everything has become so computerized lately. It's not a bad thing for the most part, but when it comes to money, what happened to keeping the loot somewhere safe? Nowadays, some dude could steal a billion bucks without moving more than a few fingers over a keyboard. How to avoid this problem? Buy a large and very, very heavy safe with a quality locking system. Bolt it to the concrete foundation of your home. Build a frame around the base and pour concrete, thereby enclosing the bolting job in several inches of concrete and making the attachment very permanent. If someone wants to bust into this thing, they'll have to come with jackhammers, heavy duty metal cutters, and if they intend on busting the safe open elsewhere, lifting equipment. By then, someone will hear all this noise. Keep your money in cash in this safe. Nothing in any bank. And keep the darn thing locked up tight. Let the cybercrooks figure that one out.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
"FBI Reports All-Time High In Internet Fraud Losses" should be: "FBI uses scare tactics on public to further future agenda of restricting internet even more" I do get scared when I read these kinds of messages. Scared that 'the public' might fall for this and say: "YES! We DO want restrictions! Because we have to protect 'our great nation' against (and here we go) terrorism, crime and child pornography and everything else that we could be scared about."
... All-Time High ...
;-)
So it will decrease from now on?
In Finland there was very recently WinCapita or winclubcapita or something like that. A website that told you to invest minium of 3k euros (=4700 us dollars) and you would get 400% yearly profits. Oh, and you are only supposede to talk about it to people you want to invite there. Sounds VERY shady, yes?
Well, apparently 10 000 people fell into it in Finland.
Most were farmers and such that but hell, biggest investment was 500k euros (780 000 us dollars) so... yeah.
Apparently the site suddenly vanished and the finnish police reported that the owners of it are in Thailand.
It's a crime to let too stupid people keep their money.
Hell, I won't even taken them from my own family members.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Back in the day when I was a young coder - that was in a whole different century, mind you - we had these paper gadgets called "checks" that couldn't be cashed unless the account holder signed them. Our banks kept records called signature cards to compare them to, to make sure the checks were legit.
Even when Automatic Teller Machines came along, you needed both a card and a Personal Identification Number to withdraw cash.
But these days, anyone who knows your routing number (bank and branch number) and your account number can initiate an EFT to rob you blind! Yes, they'll get caught eventually - but your money will be long gone.
I understand that the banking industry is losing ten billion dollars a year worldwide this way. You'd think that would be enough to get them to require some kind of authentication, but I guess the efficiency savings from not having to process paper checks makes up for it.
Small comfort to the victims though.
A friend of mine who is a professor, with a PhD and very prominent in his field, with a big grant and legions of grad students, fell for a phishing scam. They withdrew $4000 from his account. He'd never heard of phishing before. So you see, the scams do pay off sometimes.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
increase as amount of Internet users increase. News at 11.
1. Bank phishing is almost non-existent according to the docs - from the PDF I assume comes under Identity Fraud which in total comprises 2.9 % of overall internet fraud. Given that this number is all Identity Fraud, not just phishing, can we assume that people have finally gotten the message about opening emails from their bank ? Or is there a more covert reason in that banks are unwilling to admit to being stung and therefore payout the complaint without telling the autorities ??? (I would have thought this would be the most profitable online scam out there)
2. Russia. Only 0.8 % of Internet Fraud comes from Russia ??? For all the bad press over the years... Is anyone else having a hard time accepting this number ?
The worst advise law enforcement can give are along the lines of:
1) look at feedback. make sure that the seller has a positive track record.
2) if the sellers asks for cash or money orders be suspecious.
3) make sure that the contact information is valid
This kind of advise is completely misleading, because it gives the impression that caution and education are the keys to crime prevention. On the contrary, smart crooks will use these exact elements to manipulate their victims!! How? It is easy for a crook to "steal" feedback. It is easy for a crook to dodge #2, and it is also easy for a crook to emulate #3.
The bottomline is extremely simple. If someone wishes to con someone online, it is absolutely 100% doable. The only way to protect yourself is through insurance. There is absolutely no other way. The worst thing you can say to a victim is "duh, you should have known better". Sure, there are people who will fall more easily to careless cons than others. But the bottomline is still the same. There are ways of stealing identities and getting paid that are completely unavoidable. To the victims, these cases are sheer bad luck. And the criminals deserve the worst because they know what they are doing and they will most likely do it again knowing that it works.
Currently, the only viable option for insurance is credit card fraud protection. If your merchandise doesn't arrive, then just dispute the charge. This does have a huge flipside though. This same insurance that protects buyers is used for buyer fraud. Eventhough the merchandise arrived, they would call anyway and try and get their money back. For sellers, paypal's seller protection policy is the only insurance against this tactic.
...report what will keep them growing on the backs of the tax payer. If federal-jurisdiction crime goes down, do you think the FBI will let us know? No. If gun crime goes down with the BATFE let us know? Of course not. All regulatory agencies have a vested interest in more stringent regulations, because it will mean more unwitting violations and more dollars for their coffers.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
My "X" loved these. I don't know if it really fraud, or just really good sales technich. Basicly she was told to go shop here and she would get re-imbursed. Well sometimes she got paid, and sometimes, well it came back that there was an "error" and she couldn't get re-imbursed. I wonder how many company's pay someone to "get" shoppers in there store, and that "someone" gets scams to have people send money, and make it impossable to "do it correctly" so they don't have to re-imburse. I know it isn't exactly what people think of for this scam. I kept telling her to stop, but she never did listen.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
Do those numbers include all the people who clicked the FBI's fake links to child porn?
Today I was checking my gmail spam box to make sure good stuff didn't get filtered into there and there was an email for "See sex videos of Sarah Jessica Parker". What man would fall for that? I'll pass if Parker is making the list these days.
Can I bum a sig?
That's like reporting in the late 50s that TV viewing was at an all time high. The phrase "all time" obviously doesn't mean all time because the stuff hasn't existed that long.
"While the number of cases dropped, the amount of money lost to internet fraud reached an all-time high in 2007"
This is usually a sign that the persons involved are more organized and sophisticated.
After all, why scam millions and get $.02 from each one when you can scam a few, get a whole lot of money out of each, and take advantage of their unwillingness to admit they've been duped?
We're obviously talking about a group that is maximizing their profit returns on this, and we should be especially worried that those involved might be in key positions in governmental agencies.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Dear lucky /. recepient,
/. articles for you and uplink the knowledge to your account. You will be able to post with great praise and get informative & interesting karma on all topics! Just please reply back with your name, address, bank account and social security number.
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Why is it that so many people automatically take as holy gospel anything written by some kid who came slouching out of some no-name college with a Journalism degree in his paw, and who probably never set foot in Russia in his life?
Regards;
"[...]China has been named as the source of many online attacks over the past year, but it didn't make IC3's list of top 10 countries by perpetrators. Leading the list were the US, the United Kingdom and Nigeria. "
Although it's 5.7% it's still 3rd on that list.
I've had repeated issues with buyers attempting to defraud me, and trust me, Paypal's so-called "Seller Protection Policy" is utterly nonexistent.
Two examples from my personal experience:
Basically, they always side with the buyer, who might file a chargeback! If the seller isn't bullied into just giving-in and authorizing the return/refund, then charge them the full fees on the transaction on top of taking every penny of the original amount back too. Seriously, if someone sends you $1000 through Paypal, you wind up with, say, $972.00 after they take out their fees. If the buyer complains and the seller doesn't roll-over, Paypal will force the refund anyway, attempt to take back your $972.00, and then charge you another $28.00 fee, leaving you holding the bag for whatever you spent on shipping AND that fee. Yes, even though you only received $972.00 in the first place, they try to double-dip and put you on the hook for the full $1,000 of the original transaction, even if the buyer doesn't file a chargeback. The rep confirmed that this is, in fact, their policy.
If that's "protection", I don't want it. I don't use eBay or Paypal anymore,this Power Seller is finished. I'm tired of the shenanigans, buyers apparently know that Paypal will always side with them and it's the best way to commit fraud, even if it's just buyer's remorse. No thanks, I'm done with that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Like millions of people, U probably got that $4 charge from THE PORTLAND CHAP. All it takes is 1 insecure website, break in, charge $4 to a million credit cards. No-one notices.
A lot of online crime doesn't get reported as online crime. say for instance, most types of identity theft, in general they're gaining the information online, but doing the crimes offline, so they don't get reported as internet crime.
so there is a huge skew between the amount of money stolen online, vs the amount on 'online crime' reported. I've heard (on TV shows) of figures as high as $6 billion a year globally for credit card/bank fraud etc that is done online, but because the victims don't go to a website to enter that information it isn't counted as 'online' crime even though the credit card data was transfered over the internet via compromised computers, and the stuff purchased with those credit cards was done online as well, but still, it's not called online crime because the person finds out when they try to get a new credit card and are denied... they find out off-line so it's considered an off-line crime even though the bad guys could do nothing without computers to do their dirty deeds.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
It's not that hard to do... why can't they get off their collective asses and do it?
--Mike--
I've never seen an annual report generated by a law enforcement agency that omitted: How many people were arrested and charged with so-called cyber crimes during 2007? What crimes were they charged with? How many suspects were convicted? How much jail or prison time, if any, did they get?
What percentage of the criminal charges were based on fraudulent conduct against individual victims (as opposed to corporate or other institutional victims)?
The people who do this have to get something set up with their bank, but it must not be very hard because that's all the phishing spammers need to rob you.
Of course when the fraud is discovered, the bank will shut down their accounts and report them to the authorities, but they will by then have withdrawn the money and disappeared without a trace.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
10 000 locals not 100 000 ... typo.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Afraid of pain, but want evolution?
Had it been for the likes of us, as we are today, we'd still be monkeys. Always afraid of change. Imagine the early cave man, learning of fire... the fearful society of today is actually projecting its own fearful nature upon the early man, but I wager, all of our "progress" was due to curiosity, not governmental "protections".
I don't expect change to come from the majority. Majority has always been kicked, dragging and screaming into each tomorrow. As they say, "in all change, 5% or less are doing all the work, the other 95% are furniture."
Until the airlines are bankrupt, we will not see anything new replace them. Until government loses its faithful, we will not see freedom embraced. Either way, these last two generations will damage at least 3 more before the world can be set to freedom... which leads me to believe that the majority will ALWAYS want to be in a chicken coop... it will always fear being free.
No concerns though, I demand nothing of the majority EXCEPT that it stay OUT of my life, and live theirs. How they go about it, is none of my business, or concern.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Need coffee it seems.
kicked, dragging and screaming
should read...
dragged, kicking and screaming.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler