14 DAY TRIAL // The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) claims that 2010 was the second most busiest year in history when it comes to the number of received complaints, however, it scored lower than 2009.
In its annual Internet crime report [pdf], the center said the total number of complaints last year counted 303,809, a sixth of the over 2 million complaints received in its ten-year history.
However, compared to 2009, the number of complaints was lower by 10 percent, suggesting either a less active cybercriminal world or people's failure to report being victimized.
Non-delivery payment scams dominated the cybercrime landscape and accounted for 14.4% of all submitted complaints.
Complaints of scammers misusing FBI's name were the second most common with a percentage of 13.2% and were followed by those related to identity theft, with 9.8%.
The top ten is completed by computer crimes (9.1%), miscellaneous fraud (8.6%), advance fee fraud (7.6%), spam (6.9%), auction fraud (5.9%), credit card fraud (5.3%) and overpayment fraud (5.3%).
In the United States, California was the state with the highest number of complainants (13.7%). It was followed by Florida (7.95%), Texas (7.3%), New York (5.8%), New Jersey (4.3%), Pennsylvania (3.6%), Illinois (3.3%), Virginia (3.0%), Ohio (2.9%) and Washington (2.9%).
As far as demographics go, the center concluded that "most complainants were in the U.S., male, between 40 and 59 and a resident of California, Florida, Texas or New York. Most foreign complainants were from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia or India."
It also noted that men reported a quarter more dollar losses than women and that people over 60 registered the higher median loss amount among all age groups.