According to the Norton Cyber-Crime Report 2011 over 74-million people in the United States alone were victims of cyber-crimes and they suffered direct losses of US$32-billion.
The report says cyber-crime cost China about US$25-billion, Brazil US$15-billion and India US$4-billion as 69% of online adults reported they had been a victim if cyber-crimes in one form.
In South Africa an astonishing 84% of online adults admitted that they had been victims of cyber-crimes in the past year. Symantec, the company that compiled the report, says that there is also an increasing trend towards higher levels of cyber-crimes affecting mobile phones.
Referring to the use of viruses to spread incidents of hacking and cyber-crimes, Symantec's Security Threat Report Volume 16 indicates that there were more than 286-million new threats recorded last year with dramatic increases in the frequency and sophistication of targeted attacks on enterprises.
It says that web-attack toolkits led to a 93% increase in the number of web-attacks on enterprises and the average number of identities caused by hacking incidents was 260 000.
