Economy down, cybercrime up

You don’t have to take Sociology 101 to know that crime tends to go up when the economy goes under. Now we’ve got proof the relationship works with cybercrime as well (as for the digital economy, well, let’s just say that the Second Life economy seems to have taken a beating even before the financial crisis): 

Fraud on the Internet reported to U.S. authorities increased by 33 percent last year, rising for the first time in three years, and is surging this year as the recession deepens, federal authorities said on Monday...Internet fraud losses reported in the United States reached a record high $264.6 million in 2008, according to a report released on Monday from the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, run by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center…

The good news? Tough times force cybercriminals to embrace innovation: 

About 74 percent of the scams were through e-mail messages last year, especially spam, while about 29 percent used websites. But criminals were increasingly tapping new technologies such as social networking sites and instant messenger services…  

Photo by RangerRick/Flickr