Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

One Cybercrime Every 10 Seconds in U.K.

by Tim Stevens on September 6, 2007 at 01:32 PM

Research Indicates Six Cybercrimes per Minute in UK

New research out of the U.K. shows a disturbing number of online crimes taking place there every year. The findings report a total of 3.24 million online crimes committed in 2006 in the U.K. at an average of one every ten seconds. But if you think that sounds bad, consider the fact that an estimated 90 percent of all cybercrimes go unreported.

Of those 3.24 million that were reported, 1.94 million were harassment, which is basically someone threatening or slandering someone else online. After that came 850,000 sex crimes, 207,000 cases of scams and fraud and 144,500 hacking-related incidents. In the case of fraud, online crimes now outnumber offline ones.

We don't have the same comprehensive figures for the U.S., but given the fact that our population is five times bigger than the U.K.'s (301,139,947 vs. 60,776,238 as of July 2006), there's every reason to believe our figures might be something more akin to one cybercrime being perpetrated every two seconds.

So, don't be a statistic. Change those passwords, watch out for scams and for crying out loud, don't wire money to Nigeria in exchange for a puppy!

From Newsvine and Metro.co.uk

Related Links:

Tags: scams, security

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular