British Cybercrooks Moving at One-Crime per 10 Seconds Speed

Every ten seconds a new cybercrime is being registered in Britain, according to the most recent research. Only during the last year the computer crooks managed to strike 3.24 million times. Some online-committed crimes even outstripped their equivalents in real world. Moreover, some experts believe about 90 per cent of cybercrimes remain unreported.

Actually, not enough is being done to prevent computer crooks from committing new crimes. It may throw serious obstacles in Britain's way towards becoming a world IT leader.

On the top of the list of cybercrimes registered last year there are 1.94 million cases of harassment. This figure includes e-mails with threatening or abusive statements, and offensive allegations left on websites.

The list is continued by 850,000 sex crimes, including cyberstalking, undesired sexual approaches in chat-rooms and pedophiles harassing children.

Then, there follow 207,000 financial frauds that outstripped 199,800 frauds committed off-line. The experts also registered 92,000 identity theft cyber-offenses, that is about 40 per cent of the overall number of such cases. The list also sports 144,500 cases of hacking into another PC.

According to Tom Ilube, representative of on-line security firm Garlik, cybercrooks' success is partially explained by the great amount of personal information left on on-line social networks.

As stated by the Home Office, they have built close cooperation with industry and law enforcement agencies to improve on-line safety.