The IC³, which is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), received an average of 25,317 cybercrime complaints per month last year, noted the 2010 Internet Crime Report.
Non-delivery of payment or merchandise accounted for the most complaints (14.4%); scams using the FBI's name (13.2%) and incidents of identity theft (9.8%) rounded out the top three types of cybercrime complaints. Victims of these crimes reported losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
The center referred nearly half of the cybercrime complaints (121,710) to law enforcement for further action. Referrals of complaints about online auction fraud, which had traditionally topped the list of cybercrime referrals, dropped from 71.2% of all referrals 10 years ago to slightly more than 10% of referrals last year.
“The steady decline in the total number of complaints and referrals of auction fraud over the last several years has altered the top complaint categories. The reason for this reduction is unknown. However, a possible explanation is that complaint levels are normalizing as businesses and consumers discover and implement ways to make previously uncharted areas of online commerce safer and more reliable”, the report observed.
John Everett with NW3C told Infosecurity that the complainant demographic has changed over the decade of the center’s work as well. Ten years ago, the 30–39 age group was the largest group reporting cybercrimes. In 2010, however, 40–49 and 50–59 represented the largest groups reporting cybercrimes, each group with 22.1% of the complaints, followed by the 30–39 group with 20.2% of the complaints.
In 2010, the number of cybercrime complaints were fairly evenly distributed among age groups, Everett said. “No one is safe”, he added.
The gender gap in cybercrime reporting has narrowed as well. Early in IC³’s history, men reported cybercrime at a ratio of more than 2.5 to 1 over women. Today, men and women report cybercrimes almost equally. The narrowed reporting gap between the sexes has affected the dollar loss between men and women over the last 10 years. During the course of IC³’s early history, men reported a loss of more than $2.00 for every $1.00 reported by a woman. According to the 2010 data, men now report a loss of $1.25 for every $1.00 reported by a woman.
Everett noted that cybercrime complaints can be submitted to IC³ at its website.