Study - Victims of Online Scams Avoid Reporting Attacks

Researchers at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies of the University of Portsmouth recently conducted a study under NFA (National Fraud Authority) to find that people who become victims of spam mails, fake lotteries, phishing and identity theft, feel so embarrassed that they restrain from telling police about them.

The study found that the fraudsters like phishers and spammers robbed people of an estimated £14 Billion every year in Wales and England. They used those profits to spend on more dangerous offenses such as trafficking of drugs and people.

Dr. Mark Button, lead author of the study, said that many fraudsters believed in piling of consumer confidential information and then selling it in bits for small sums to a vast number of people. A reason for the success in netting huge amount of pounds annually is that numerous scam victims hope that by revealing some of their information, they might win a chance of getting rewarded in case the scam proved genuine, as reported by the University of Portsmouth on December 17, 2009.

Due to e-mail users anticipation of getting rewards, many successful scammers maintain and trade information of those people who unsuspectingly hand over information to them. Not only this, the scammers subsequently launch attacks against them (already victims) with newer scams in different forms.

Interestingly, the researchers found that of 4 different kinds of scams considered in the study, the Nigerian e-mail scam alone convinced 70,000 Brits every year to hand over an average of £2,858 each.

The NFA seems to have become alert with the findings of new research. The Authority is examining dual novel methods to help the fraud victims. One of these methods is to make those victims' experience better, who report about online frauds.

The other method takes care of victims who either deny of online frauds or are unaware of them. Focusing on repeat fraud victims, this method tries to help relatives and friends from the fraudsters' attacks via improved coordination among police, local councils and service organizations.

Related article: Stock Spamming On the Rise

» SPAMfighter News - 12/30/2009