Phonebusters published some interesting information on their web site and I thought that I should share it with all of you. They released their statistics for December 2009 and those stats include a snapshot of the year in identity theft. Those statistics seem to indicate that fewer people fell victim to identity theft, but the average loss was much greater.

In 2008, 11,511 reported being the victims of identity theft. These people were victimized out of a total of $9,697,199.05. In 2009, only 11,135 people reported being the victims of identity theft but they lost a total of $10,993, 348.72. If you do the math, this means that in 2009, the average identity theft victim lost $987.28.

And here is how the wise guys changed the ComatOSe:

And then they asked all Cybera people not to use it! Why? Because the ugly Googa monster was so strong that he could break any "encrypt" function and he could also filter any noise added. Not mentioning he could monitor all the onion activities too!

Those of you who follow this spot know that I am a big fan of Phonebusters and that I like to re-print and promote their statistics on identity theft in Canada. Further, you may have noticed a rather troubling trend - identity theft seems to be on the rise.

With that trend in mind, I was especially happy to see Phonebusters' October numbers. In October 2009, only 295 people called Phonebusters and reported being a victim of identity theft! These people were defrauded out of a total of $609,933.79. Those numbers compare favourably to September 2009, when 808 people were defrauded out of a total of $1,143,206.95.

In my last article, I touched on Washington State's Computer Spyware Act. That piece of legislation immediately caught my interest, so I decided to research it further and share the results of my research with all of our readers. Needless to say, I am definitely a fan of this kind of legislation. As I wrote in my last article, "Detailed, on-point legislation like this is a necessary first step for combating cyber-crime. It is a huge step up from the maze of fraud charges and consumer protection statutes that some jurisdictions must navigate to shut down cyber-criminals."

Now that I have had a chance to read the entire act, I think I am even a bigger fan of this piece of legislation. Simply put, it is tough legislation that is built around 21st century crime. And, the more I read it, the more I realize that it is flexible enough to adapt to the next phase of cybercrime.

On October 19, 2009, Symantec released its Report on Rogue Security Software. This report is very short (under 50 pages), yet it is full of extremely useful information on the rise of scareware. As well, Symantec's web site (linked to above) has a huge amount of supplementary information on scareware.

We have been talking about scareware since Daniel McCann's second post on the SmartSwipe blog. So, the facts that scareware is booming and that it is one of the most unethical scams in an internet that is full of scams should not be new.

I have always been a huge Star Wars fan. When I was in kindergarten, I decided that I was going to be a Jedi when I 'grew up'. Quickly realizing that the force was not strong in me, I got quite interested in astronomy and, at one point, badly wanted to become an astronaut.

As I grew, my dreams changed - I got bitten by the writing bug and devoted much of my teens and twenties to learning how to craft words. But, while I never actually pursued my dreams of becoming an astronaut, I still consider myself something of a space nerd. So, I eagerly seek out and digest every bit of astronomy related news that I am lucky enough to hear about.