Top Cybercrimes Of The Year

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The FBI has released its annual "Internet Cybercrime Report" and surprise, surprise; Internet crime complaints are up dramatically.

Total dollar losses related to Internet crimes reported to the FBI topped $559 million dollars in 2009. That's up from $264 million dollars in 2008. That's what I call a dramatic increase. Either cybercrime is way up or the FBI is just getting much better at tracking complaints. I suspect some of both is in play.

I would have guessed that identity theft would be the number one complaint. Not so! The number one complaint was scams that involve impersonating the FBI (let's think about that one and consider who put out the report). The number two complaint was non-delivery of merchandise. Number three was non-payment. Number four was identity theft.

At the bottom of the top ten crimes reported: #7 spam, #8 credit card fraud, #9 auction fraud, #10 computer damage.

I found that interesting considering those last four (and identity theft) are the ones we hear the most about; often on a daily basis it seems.

- About one in five crimes reported involved losing $100 or less.

- Higher amounts only make-up about 13%

Cheers!

Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987.