Norton's Study on Cost of Cybercrime Considered a Marketing Campaign

Norton, a subsidiary of Symantec, is accused of making up numbers in their latest cybercrime research in the attempt of scaring people into buying more online security products.

The Sydney Morning Herald took a closer look at the study, which supposedly was based on questions answered by some 20,000 people from 24 countries around the world.

So what seems to be wrong?

What bothers the experts most is the fact that they managed to calculate so accurately the amount of money that was supposedly lost because of the time spent to recover from cyberattacks.

Strategy One, the survey company responsible for the numbers, doubled the direct costs of virtual crimes and came up with $274 billion (€172 billion) for “time lost.”

So they took the $114 billion (€79 billion), added the $274 billion (€172 billion) and they came up with a number that's very close to the costs of the annual drug trafficking that takes place around the globe.

The research appears to be a bit “fine-tuned” as the sums reported by the United Nations relating to illegal substance trading is precise, without any potential collateral losses that might come from these activities.

Also, another reason why the figures don't seem to add up is because it seems that they've placed all types of credit card frauds under the umbrella of online unlawful activities. Bank account related immoral operations don't necessarily involve hackers or people with computer programming knowledge. As seen in many cases, credit cards can get physically stolen and bank accounts can be emptied without ever involving computing devices.

According to the same source, Norton releases these types of studies periodically as in 2009 they've made another similar statement, claiming that cybercrime has topped drugs when it comes to counting losses.

Company representatives were quoted as stating "We are confident that the Norton Cybercrime Report is a valid representation of the current state of consumer cyber crime," explaining that part of the figures mentioned in the report came from undeclared attacks [via].