Low Level E-Crime is Being Ignored

20 February 2008

The reality is if you lose £30 because your Internet order didn’t arrive, then not only have you lost your money, no one cares. There is no police or government agency that is interested in taking a report, let alone investigating it. And it won’t show up as Internet-related in any crime statistics. Unfortunately, that is the reality of the advice that www.e-victims.org can offer e-victims, but said in a gentler way.

“Victims of low-level crime are frustrated and angry. Most people know that their incident won’t be resolved. But they still want someone to tell, someone to care what has happened to them. At the very least they expect someone to record the incident” explains Jennifer Perry, co-founder of The E-Victims Organisation.

It is in the Government and business’ interest to provide more support to e-victims. This week a Eurostat report shows that almost 15% of potential online shoppers avoid e-shopping because of security fears. That roughly translates to 4 million Internet users. If 15% of people were too scared to shop on the High Street, something would be done about it.

But the question is how to respond. “There isn’t one easily identifiable single issue on the Internet that is damaging consumer confidence. It is a combination of things that are affecting consumer perception.”

“Look at it from the consumer’s perspective. They are inundated by spam and scams in their email boxes. They see misleading adverts, websites that make outrageous claims, absurd competitions. Everywhere they go someone wants their email address or personal data. They are constantly being targeted. That is even before they are a victim of malware or fraud” says Perry.

The Government response to the Lords Science and Technology report on Personal Internet Safety was essentially to claim that the problem wasn’t significant and pointed to the continued growth of the Internet and e-commerce.

But that response does not address the issue. “Every Internet user with an email address has had a phishing attempt, lottery or Nigerian scam. Most of us have had all three - and much more” says Perry.

The E-Victims service is a practical response to e-crime and online incidents. The need for such a service has been identified by six different government task forces and committees over the past seven years.

“We don’t underestimate the challenge. We have to develop advice, support and record incidents on a broad range of topics. It has to be a joint effort working alongside support agencies, policing and industry” explains Perry.

The benefit of having a national advice service means that for the first time we will be able to record the problems, volume and trends. This information would be invaluable in improving preventative advice, providing support, developing better codes of practice and prioritising investigative resources. More importantly it would help restore consumer confidence.