According to FBI reports last week, losses from online fraud rose from $264.6 million in 2008 to $559.7 million in 2009. Last year the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 336,655 complaints, a big 22.3% increase from the year before. The IC3 is a partnership between the FBI and National White Collar Crime Center.

The highest percentage of complaints, 16.6%, were email scams that falsely claimed to be from the FBI to gain personal information. The top five categories of reported offenses included non-delivered merchandise and/or payment at 19.9%, identity theft, 14.1%, credit card fraud, 10.4%, auction fraud, 10.3%, and computer fraud, 7.9%.

One popular scam was a phone pitch made by someone sounding like President Barack Obama, encouraging people to visit a website for government stimulus money. Those who visited and paid the $28 in fees after handing over their personal information did not get the promised stimulus check. Another commonly reported scam was fake pop-up ads for malicious anti-virus software. Victims receive ads warning them of threatening viruses on their computer that end up downloading malicious code to their computer after clicking.

Over 86.7% of complaints reported to law enforcement showed a loss of $5,000 or less. The median dollar loss was $575. More than half of the complaints came from males, and 92% came from the United States.  Anyone who uses the internet can be a victim of cybercrime.  Tizer Secure™ offers internet security protection to help keep your personal information safe.

The full internet crime report can be found here.