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Indians fifth largest victims of Internet rip-offs

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CIOL Bureau
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WASHINGTON, USA: The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), today released the 2008 Annual Report on the number of Internet crime complaints received.

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As per the report, Internet-based rip-offs were increased by 33 per cent last year over the previous year, causing a loss of $265 million to the victims.

A total of 275,284 complaints were received in 2008 - up from 206,884 over 2007 and total dollar loss reported in 2008 was $265 million - up from $239 million in 2007, the report said. The average individual loss was $931.

As per the reports, Americans filed 275,284 reports (92.4 per cent), claiming to be ripped off on the Internet. This is the highest number reported since the Internet Crime Complaint Centre began keeping statistics in 2000. India is at the fifth position with 0.36 per cent. Canada (1.77 per cent), Britain (0.95 per cent) and Australia (0.57 per cent) came second, third and fourth respectively.

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“This report illustrates that sophisticated computer fraud schemes continue to flourish as financial data migrates to the Internet," said Shawn Henry, the FBI's assistant director of the cyber division.

“It also underscores the need for continued vigilance on the part of law enforcement, businesses, and the home computer user to be aware of these schemes and employ sound security procedures,” he added.

The top three most frequent complaints were about merchandise that wasn't delivered or payment that wasn't received, Internet auction fraud and credit/debit card fraud. Other scams include confidence frauds such as Ponzi schemes, cheque fraud, the Nigerian letter fraud and identity fraud.

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Of those complaints reporting a dollar loss, the highest median losses were found among check fraud ($3,000), confidence fraud ($2,000), Nigerian (west African, 419, Advance Fee) letter fraud ($1,650).

The majority of reported perpetrators (66.1 per cent) were from the United States. However, a significant number of perpetrators where also located in the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Canada, China, and South Africa, the report said.

Interestingly males lost more money than females (ratio of $1.69 dollars lost per male to every $1.00 dollar lost per female).

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E-mail (74.0 per cent) and webpages (28.9 per cent) were the two primary mechanisms by which the fraudulent contact took place, the report said.

One popular identity fraud scam used during 2008 involved sending e-mails about the recipient winning a lottery or inheriting a property. The email would ask for the recipient's account details and say that FBI needs it for the transaction. At times, they are told that if they do not comply with the FBI’s request for information, they will be prosecuted or suffer some other financial penalty.

In some cases, recipients are led to believe that they will become the subject of a terrorist investigation if they fail to cooperate.

In the report FBI made it clear once again that "The FBI does not contact US citizens regarding personal financial matters through unsolicited e-mails."

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