Last year more than 74 million people in United States were victims of some form of cybercrime, which resulted in $32 billion in direct financial losses. Every second 14 adults worldwide are victimized by online fraudsters, which is more than 1 million people every day.
While Americans may have gotten used to cybercrime during the past year, after large-scale data breaches at Citibank, Sony and Epsilon, the problem may still be worse than people think.
Global cybercrime has claimed 431 million adult victims in the past year, according to the report of antivirus software manufacturer Norton, and this cost countries $114 billion in direct financial losses. That figure jumps to $388 billion when you factor in the value that victims place on the time they spent recouping the losses.
Examples of cybercrime include emailed viruses and malware (still the most prevalent offense with 54% of respondents saying they have experienced this type of fraud), online scams (11%) and phising messages (10%), which attempt to obtain personal information through deceptive links in emails. The figures are based on surveys of 19,636 people in 24 countries.
Many types of online scams have become more prevalent partially due to growing popularity of smartphones, which offer another digital platform for fraudsters to exploit.
Norton cites in its report that, when looking at global estimates, cybercrime costs world governments more than the marijuana, cocaine and heroin black markets combined. Based on stats from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, those illicit trades cost $141.1 billion, $85 billion and $61 billion, respectively, for a total of $288 billion.
We did some digging and found that cybercrime losses more than surpass some countries’ entire GDP, such as Iceland ($11.82 billion), Malta ($10.41 billion) and Barbados ($6.23 billion). It also dwarves productivity losses due to insomnia ($63.2 billion), long-term care obligations ($33.6 billion) and March Madness ($1.8 billion), though having that money back would do little to solve the country’s astronomical debt problem.