The Internet is known to offer endless possibilities and opportunities to its users, and that includes fraud, the 2007 Internet Crime Report shows. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), they’ve received a total of 206,884 complaints regarding crimes over the Internet in 2007 alone, reaching an all time high: nearly $240 million in losses were reported.

FBI’s Cyber Division Assistant Director James E. Finch said: “The Internet presents a wealth of opportunity for would be criminals to prey on unsuspecting victims.” The statistics show only the crimes that have been reported, but there is a lot more going on that the authorities don’t know of: “Filing a complaint through IC3 is the best way to alert law enforcement authorities of Internet crime.”

The Internet Complaint Center reported that by comparison, men are more likely to lose money than women: the statistics have shown losses up to 50 percent higher for men than for women. The most commonly reported scams involve the purchase or sale of pets, check scams, e-mail spam and online dating fraud, IC3 said.

According to the 2007 Internet Crime Report, 75.8% of the perpetrators were predominantly male, half of them from the United States. Nearly half of the complaints filed with the IC3 came from males between the ages of 30 and 50.

The same report unveils that male complainants lost on average $1.67 to every $1.00 lost per female, which could indicate both differences in purchase preferences and the favorite targets of Internet perpetrators, who usually use electronic mail (e-mail) (73.65%) and Web pages (32.7%) for their scams.

IC3 is a joint operation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center, and serves as vehicle to receive complaints from both private citizens and industry referring to cyber crimes.