back to article US cybercrime losses reach $240m

Financial losses from online crime reported to US authorities reached a record high last year, topping nearly $240m. Taking into account unreported crimes the real figure is likely to be much higher. Auction fraud and other forms of cybercrime reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) were up $40m or 20 per cent …

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  1. RW
    Coat

    $240 million? Is that all?

    That's less than $1 per head on average. Equivalent to 1% of the population losing $100 once a year to "cybercrime." Or one out of a thousand citizens losing $1000 annually.

    Sounds like chickenfeed to me.

    Somebody refresh my memory: what's the aggregate cost so far of the Iraq and Afghanistan incursions?

  2. Jamie
    Linux

    For the cost check here.

    http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

  3. John Macintyre

    so that's like..

    a day in iraq then? slow news day?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That's bullshit!

    These statistics are completely understated.

  5. heystoopid
    Pirate

    So

    So if you read the terms of Ebay Paypal , they must be coining the money in by doubling up the losses of the unfortunate seller , by a simple stroke of a key !

  6. Gordon Fecyk
    Thumb Up

    Nice to see cited sources for once, re: crime costs

    After seeing so many inflated guesstimates from computer security vendors over the past decade, it's good to see some hard numbers reported in by some very real people. The one dollar per person, as suggested by RW, sounds plausible. Serious enough to warrant attention, but not stupid.

    Compare: "Code Red has already cost an estimated $1.2 billion in damage, and may top out at an incredible $8.7 billion when its bitter reign of destruction finally ends."

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/08/02/code_red_hysteria_8_7bn/

    So, $240 million lost to real, reported fraud compared to $8.7 billion lost to imaginary, guesstimated damage from a single piece of malware. I wonder if any of the Code Red-affected folks filed insurance claims.

  7. TrishaD

    @Gordon

    The damage from Code Red was far from imaginary. As someone who was involved in the clean-up for one major international company, I'd say the figure quoted was perfectly realistic.

    Your continued restating of the fallacy that viruses cost nothing and impact no-one is irresponsible

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