One Cybercrime Every 10 Seconds in U.K.
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
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