Monday, 18 June 2007

US Has One Million Online Crime Complaint

The number of online crime complaints in the US has just crossed one million mark. The Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) says that it received its 1 millionth complaint last week...

The number of online crime complaints in the US has just crossed one million mark. The Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) says that it received its 1 millionth complaint last week.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Centre jointly run IC3, launched in 2000 as a collection place for reports of online fraud. It passes on information to law enforcement agencies, and keeps track of trends in cybercrime.

So far, IC3 has referred nearly a half-million complaints representing almost USD650 million in losses to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

In the last seven years since its existence, online crimes have changed completely. Most complaints earlier were the typical non-delivery auction fraud and now it involves identity thefts. It is also learned that auction fraud and online financial scams are still the top problems.

Auction fraud accounted for nearly half of the complaints received by the IC3 last year.