Fraud.International.Internet

The internet has changed the way many people have done business. It has made many users of this service millionaires and many others well off or has given others an alternate source of revenue. Meanwhile the opposite of this has been the internet crimes prevalent on this virtual space. According to a recent Yahoo article, as many as 239.09 million dollars were lost to internet fraud in 2007. This was up from 198.44 million dollars lost during 2006.

FBI special agent John Hambrick reports "We're seeing more schemes involving bigger ticket items, get-rich-quick and work-at-home schemes that involve higher dollar losses... A cyber criminal is only looking for a less than one percent return on all the emails he sends out, and he can still make money hand over fist.”

So it seems the saying crime doesn’t pay is not valid for the online world as it is working generously for these online criminals as they are making money by putting a little effort to manipulating navigators of the internet.

I find this interesting as the internet is such an unruly place that many young kids and naïve adults could be tricked into just about joining up for anything these days. This would bring up the argument of regulating the internet but everyone has been pushing to keep the internet free of regulation (see net neutrality). How do we counter this? There should be international programs in place for reporting fraud and/or informing internet users on what schemes are out on the net.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080403/tc_afp/usinternetcrimetechnology