Call made for more cybercrime to be reported to police

Cybercrimes often go unreported with the victims unsure of who to report to.

Graham Cluley senior technology consultant at Sophos, claimed that when a cybercrime is committed people tend to accept it and move on without reporting it because it happened on the internet.

He said: “It is a crime that has been committed, but how do we tell people about it? At the moment it is something that happens to people that no one wants to know about, so when a person is hit by malware or has some kind of cybercrime committed against them, they are told by the police to contact people like us. We are the ones who are seen as being able to solve the problem.

He further claimed that there is a method to report spam, but many people are either unaware of it, or see it as too much hassle to complete. He said: “There is a way of reporting spam, if you do want to report it to the police you need to print off a PDF file, fill it in biro as they will not accept it electronically, and then post it with one spam report per envelope.

“It is all lip service and it has been deliberately made to be laborious to reduce the complaints, there has got to be a better way.

There has been a situation where the police have come to us as they have arrested someone who has written a spam code, but they can't do anything until they have a victim who will come forward. Shouldn't there be a way to report the crime, and where the police have the details?”

Looking to the future, Cluley claimed that he does not have confidence that a solution will appear in 2009, but as long as minor offences get reported the cybercrime police will have a record of reports.

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