The £2.61 billion online robbery
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, phishing, Spyware, Spam, Security, Internet on
With some 12% of the UK population falling victim to online fraud within the last 12 months alone, I guess it should come as no surprise that as far as the online version goes crime does pay. The extent to which is pays, of course, is another thing altogether. New research from YouGov and VeriSign (commissioned to launch the VeriSign UK Fraud Index) suggests that the average cost per victim of online ID fraud is £463. If you are one of those who have been mugged in this manner, I feel for you - unless you have acted like some greedy village idiot in which case consider it an expensive but effective lesson in trust.
Truth be told, less than £500 per person on average doesn’t sound too frightening. I imagine that, like the three people I randomly asked about the survey this morning, you thought that victims of Nigerian 419 and Canadian Lottery scams got fleeced for thousands at a pop. But remember these are averages we are talking about, and quite apart from the highs and lows of such math, you also need to take into account the huge numbers of people concerned. Multiply the average by millions, because that’s what we are talking about here, and the figures start to get very worrying indeed.
The survey shows that in the last 12 months some £2.61 billion was stolen online from UK consumers. This despite 82% of them claiming to only buy from sites with enhanced security settings. Obviously they are not doing enough checking, and not applying enough common sense to avoid being defrauded though.
It also revels that only 5% of 18-24 year olds have been defrauded, suggesting that younger folk are not only more street-wise but also more web-wise. People aged 45-54, however, are defrauded the most with some 14% claiming to have fallen victim to online ID fraud.
Looked at from a geographical perspective, it is Londoners who are most careless when it comes to buying stuff online with 18% of them saying they just don’t bother checking site security settings before purchasing. That compares to just 9% in Northern Ireland, for example, who ranks as the safest. Welsh folk are the biggest victims of online fraud, however, with some 20% percent stating that they had experienced ID fraud in the last year, while only 8% of Scots said the same.
“Research reveals that there isn’t a relationship between the number of people who check a website’s security and those who have been scammed” Martin Mackay, VeriSign’s vice president of EMEA reckons. “There are still too many out there who simply don’t know the danger signs to look for when buying online. We’re committed to measuring fraud in the UK to raise awareness of this issue, and promise to educate the public with regular campaigns on what they should be looking for before buying online.”
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Comment by - October 9, 2009 on 7:54 am
nice,i like.
Comment by - November 4, 2009 on 10:10 am
Thanks for the post.
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