A loved one with an entrepreneurial spirit figures to soon be procuring product for his new venture from vendors in China. His situation is far from unique.
This has raised a host of issues relevant to cybercrime (and, for that matter, the subject of online contracting):
•How does one establish that the vendor is who he claims to be?
•Will the transactional documents will remain as drawn, and unaltered?
•Will the goods will be delivered?
A lot of good advice about such concerns, among others, is available at the website of the Internet Crime Complaint Center ("IC3"), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center that was established in 2000 "to address the ever-increasing incidence of online fraud." (2012 Internet Crime Report, Internet Crime Complaint Center p. 5).
Is cybercrime a big deal?
Here is the data from the most recent year available (2012):
Total complaints received: 289,874
Complaints reporting loss: 114,908
Total loss: $525,441,110.00
Median dollar loss for those reporting a loss: $600.00
Average dollar loss overall: $1,813.00
Average dollar loss for those reporting loss: $4,573.00
Where does Illinois fit in?
It ranks seventh in number of complaints by state (8,297 complaints) and fifth in losses ($14,316,107.72). (California, Florida, and Texas rank 1-2-3 in both those categories.)
Every once in a while, the FBI catches a bad guy. But the principal contribution of IC3 is that it imparts information and education to consumers. In terms of information, it regularly publishes online scam alerts that are available at the above identified web site address.
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