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Security Businesses The Almighty Buck

Hackers Stole $172 Billion From People Last Year (symantec.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Yearly report published by security firm Norton estimates that as many as 978 million people in 20 countries lost money to cybercrime last year. On an average, the firm says, victims lost an average of $142 and spent nearly 24 hours dealing with the fallout of their attack.
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Hackers Stole $172 Billion From People Last Year More

Hackers Stole $172 Billion From People Last Year

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  • Love it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:13AM (#55985183)

    Very detailed article. I'm impressed.

    Although I do wonder, how much did they get away with and keep as opposed to get caught and got to jail?

    • It's a really confusing article, where the numbers are handpicked to make it look like a serious problem. It's not at all clear what the losses were for (considering that the most prevalent 'crime' was virus infection, I imagine that most of the money went to PC/phone repair people), it's not at all clear how individuals in each country were affected (except for the time spent dealing with the aftermath), and the graph '53% of consumers experienced cybercrime...' is deliberately misleading by doubling each

  • Really? (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:16AM (#55985209) Journal
    172 billion? That's all??

    • 172 billion? That's all??

      You don't think that's a lot? Judging by Slashdot, that is more than the total value of Netflix [slashdot.org]. Of course watching Netflix's line-up is sometimes like watching the movies on MST3k without the riffing... so I'm guessing that's why people are willing to pay more to hackers than to Netflix.

      • 172 billion? That's all??

        You don't think that's a lot? Judging by Slashdot, that is more than the total value of Netflix [slashdot.org]. Of course watching Netflix's line-up is sometimes like watching the movies on MST3k without the riffing... so I'm guessing that's why people are willing to pay more to hackers than to Netflix.

        For the whole world, for the whole year, as much high profile hacking as was going on?

        Well, I was expecting more anyway ...

      • So ... they stole Netflix.

        TWICE!

        Could be worse...

      • I mean, I'm feeling a little shrinkage here. I'm running for Congress to do a lot of things, one being to end identity theft. Identity theft cost Americans $16 billion in 2017, down from $24.7 billion in 2012. We can fix this easily; it's actually trivial.

        All electronic theft is not the same thing.

        ... I can't fix this. I can fix one particular type of theft because it happens to be easy to fix. I can't end ransomware or bank arbitrage scams where someone asks you to wire them $6,000 and you legitim

        • I can guarantee an end to less than ten percent of all this.

          OK, one percent is less than ten percent. Suppose you "end" 1% "of all this"?
          That still leaves 99% to deal with.

          • That's the problem, yeah; although we have some hard numbers here (about $16 billion for the part I can fix, $172 billion for all of it).

            On the other hand, never having to worry about someone 3,000 miles away with a fake ID opening a new credit card or mortgage in your name is a definite plus.

  • 978M people at average $142 equals $139B

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They could have used a median in stead of a mean.

      Average, it's an ambiguous word.

      • Average and mean are exact synonyms. Median and mode are also words, but they are not synonyms to average or mean.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The first paragraph of wikipedia for the word "average"

          In colloquial language, an average is a middle or typical number of a list of numbers. Different concepts of average are used in different contexts. Often "average" refers to the arithmetic mean, the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are being averaged; in mathematics and statistics, this would be called the arithmetic mean. In statistics, mean, median, and mode are all known as measures of central tendency, and in colloquial usage sometimes any of these might be called an average value.

          As I said, average is an ambiguous term. I guess I could have thrown mode at it as well.

        • It might most commonly refer to mean, but median and mode are also synonyms of average.

  • Interesting.. (Score:3)

    by sqorbit ( 3387991 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:22AM (#55985267)
    Interesting data, interesting read. I do tend to read reports about security from companies trying to sell me security products with a bit of doubt though. Is it really good for business if Symantec puts out a report that shows anything but increasing security issues and data to help sell their products? One data point that's interesting is - "Having a device infected by a virus or other security threat (53%)". That number to me just shows how some people only believe they have a security issue when they see something actually happening to their devices. Judging from the amount of Apple, Microsoft and Google updates for security I would think that almost 100% of people had a device that would fall into the "other security threat" category.
  • I would be really amazed if 1 B people ACTUALLY lost $142 in a year, it's like 30 M average Americans losing $1500 each. There is ransomware and credit card theft, but former is still rare (1 % of net users is likely high ballpark) and latter covered by credit card companies.

    If corporate cybercrime is counted, sure, but the $172 B figure sounds like those sums that people calculate are lost standing in red lights. Kinda money... but actually really not.

    Of course, didn't yet RTFA, checking that out next!

  • "contradictory beliefs" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:34AM (#55985359) Journal

    Nearly one in four believe stealing information online is not as bad as stealing property in ‘real life’

    That depends entirely on what you mean by "information".

    Believing that Disney et al 's hijacking of copyright to totally pervert the system from what the founders intended is a travesty that deserves civil disobedience is not a "contradictory belief" to also believing you shouldn't steal your neighbor's stuff.

    You can go to prison for copying Steamboat Willie 90 years after it was published.

  • 25% of people with internet access (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So if 51% of the world has no internet access that would mean 978/3500 ~= 25% or 1 in 4 people got done, which seems incredibly high, i smell stats gouging.

  • The numbers in the summary don't add up to $172 Billion, when I multiply 978 million victims times average estimated loss of $142 I come up with $138,876,000,000 - a lot of money, but not $172 Billion.

  • Ukraine's GDP is about $108B, which is surprising because you'd think they'd see some of that $172B of hacker funds.

  • hmmm 172 billion, what to buy ...... Comcast? https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
  • These guys count the following as poor security practices:

    1. writing your passwords on a piece of paper.
    ---This is an issue with a home PC only if a burglar gets hold of it.
    ---You could always keep it in your wallet.
    2. using "false identities" on the internet.
    ---How the hell does that make you less secure?
    ---Using fake id's for unimportant accounts make you more secure.

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