Cybercrime becoming more organized

15 Sept 2006

Cyberscams are increasingly being committed by organized-crime syndicates out to profit from sophisticated ruses rather than hackers keen to make an online name for themselves," says Christopher Painter, deputy chief of the computer crimes and intellectual-property section at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Though the media focuses frequently on teen hackers, the  risk is greaterfrom more sophisticated crime rings that use the Internet to identify and target their victims for identity theft.

Though it's hard to calculate the full cost of cybercrime, the FBI estimates that all types of computer crime in the US alone have cost industries $400 billion dollars. Britain's Department of Trade and Industry cited data that indicates computer crimes have risen 50 percent in the last couple of years.

Painter notes that many consumers don't realize that the reason they become the victims of a crime is because they have put personal information online that may be systematically collected for illegal use. Read the article.