Home Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Paul Miloseski-Reid [EC 13]

I am the UK Lead Trading Standards Officer who provides regulatory compliance advice to eBay, Gumtree and PayPal on their obligations under consumer protection law. I initiated the Internet Auction Working Group in 2009, a sub-group of Local Government Regulation, to strategically review the crime affecting emarketplaces, which make up 36% of UK eCommerce.1 Members of the group included my equivalents who advised the other 80 UK emarketplaces eg, Amazon and CQ Out.

I have not had the opportunity to obtain views from the Internet Auction Working Group, which I Chaired, and so the following should be considered as my own personal view. I have no problems with any of the information being published. However, the information within the Annex should not be published.

Due to the pressures of investigative work within my role I have been unable to dedicate much time to presenting the following information to the standard I would have liked, but I hope the content will prove helpful to the Committee nevertheless. I have further background information and reports that I can refer the Committee to should they have an interest in some of the particular points raised below.

Prevention Better than Cure

According to Ofcom 91% of five to 15 year olds have internet access at home and this age group spends an average on 90 minutes per day online.2

Only 32% of parents say they actually monitor their child’s social networking activities every day, and 28% of parents admit they only occasionally, rarely or never monitor their child’s social networking activities.

Many children have more IT skills that their parents, and parents are not au fait with “parental locking” software etc etc etc so important to get the message to our kids from early age the dangers of the internet.

56% of 851 children and young people aged five to 18 years thought that all illegal or inappropriate things should be blocked automatically, so may be lot of support from parents for the idea of “safe” internet provision which adults have to unblock.

Internet is dominating every part of our lives: professionally, economically (retail, price comparison sites etc) and socially, particularly in the youth. It continues to grow:

Professionally:

Note the likes of Knowledge Hub, LinkedIn.

Economically:

UK is the world’s leading country for ecommerce,3 with 79% of consumers buying online—we each spend around €1333 each year on the Internet.

£47.2bn was spent online in the UK alone in 2009. It was forecasted that sales would reach £56bn by 2014, but they already reached £68bn in 2011.

UK represents over 30% of European online sales.

37 million shoppers spent £12.9bn in the 2011 Xmas period.

online shopping now accounts for 17% of the total UK retail market.

UK eCommerce to represent 12.4% of GDP by 2016.

Note the rise of Group-buying sites. UK list and issues which may surround them.

Socially:

Facebook has hit the biggest milestone in the company’s eight-year history: 1 billion users.

Also see: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2167518/Worldwide-Social-Media-Usage-Trends-in-2012

Along with Money Advice (making good financial decisions), I recommend that online safety should be an essential life skill which young people learn at school. The evidence/surveys demonstrates that parents feel out of their depth and are in need of support in this area.

Education for SMEs

Consideration ought to be given how Government gets its “online safety” message across to businesses from day 1 of trading. There could be a role for Companies House to desimminate information at the point of copany registration, however this would leave some 2,412,000 non-Ltd businesses4 without access to this advice

I believe that business registration would realise a number of government policies…

The government agenda is to reduce burdens on business and regulators. Although there would be an initial burden on business this is balanced by the reduced burdens for the business in obtaining advice. Imagine a website which acted as a business advice one-stop shop. In return for registering, they would obtain comprehensive advice on the range of legislation applicable to them along with e-newsletter updates on new Regulations and scams that may affect their business/locality.

Such a website is almost in operation already. Under the Transformational Government programme businesslink.gov.uk will be the main web portal for businesses accessing government information—see 33(3). It would only require some tweaking for it to be in a more user-friendly format where a trader can simply enter their profession and be provided with the various advice required, whether it be taxes, licensing or planning. Business Link already have a registration process for their email updates. Ideally, registration with BL would link in with Government Gateway—www.gateway.gov.uk to provide a true one-stop shop for a trader’s relationship with Government.

Businesses spend at least £1.4 billion each year on advice about how to comply with regulations. The suggestion above may help to dramatically reduce this expense.

Should the above option be explored can we also suggest including in any such registration form a requirement to provide a contact for alerts…Government could then alert SMEs to the latest scams affecting businesses

Education for Consumers

1. Currently consumers have too many options:

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_world/consumer_affairs.htm

http://www.askcedric.org.uk/comminfo.php

http://www.communitylegaladvice.org.uk/gateway/consumer.jsp

http://europa.eu/eu-life/consumer-rights/index_en.htm

http://www.getsafeonline.org/

http://wayback.archive-it.org/1961/20100806070105/http://www.besafeonline.org//

Along with sites, specialising in certain aspects of consumer advice: www.no-ur-rites.com; www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=125&pagetype=90

There must be ONE “Government central advice” site for pre-shopping and post-contract advice. This ought to include an eCommerce page with a forum for questions and answers (eg, http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/) and template letters of complaint. This should collaborate with private/third sector sites which already have useful resources eg, Which?, MoneySupermarket, by signposting to the sections of those sites

2. Awareness of customer supporting bodies like the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and the Financial Ombudsman Service is low, therefore the majority of consumers are reliant on the business to inform consumers. A) this should be included in consumer educaiton, but also a legal duty on all eMoney providers to make a statement about the Financial Ombudsman Service scheme in their promotional material just as UK banks must.

3. Move Howard online shopping assistant—www.ukecc.net/sub.asp?id=209—to the “Government central pre-shopping advice” site and then improve upon it.

The concept of Howard online shopping assistant is great, however it is somewhat restricted in which sites you can research and could possibly be more user friendly. A few suggestions to perhaps provide a more comprehensive series of online background checks for consumers:

A.The website search to utilise some of following sites which have greater number of domain names registered or if not possible links to them:

Allwhois

Internetters

Internic

Network Solutions

samspade

B.Provide details of EU VAT number check.

C.Most consumers would not have company number and so provide details of company registrars—European Business Register.

D.Google search can sometimes provide useful information, however it would be very helpful to also refer them to the country’s most popular Consumer Complaint Forums eg. in the UK we have:

www.grumbletext.co.uk/

http://www.blagger.com/

www.clik2complaints.co.uk/

E.Information on the country’s equivalent of the following that we have in UK would assist:

Check CCJs, court orders and fines

OFT EA Injunctions/Undertakings database

Disqualified Directors Register

Insolvency Register for Bankrupts

Liquidation and legal notices

BBC Rogue Traders

Watchdog reports

Referenceline

Checkatrade

http://postcode.royalmail.com/portal/rm/addressfinder?catId=400145

Encourage Consumers To Report Problem Sites

Quick reporting button included in IE, google chrome etc which sends report to that country’s central repository eg, Action Fraud for UK. We suggest you publish the best cases showing how an individual’s report led to a conviction—pushing the angle “one person makes all the difference”. Consider a Name & Shame policy as ASA does so consumers see action is being taken.

Challenges for Enforcement

There are over 4000 ISPs worldwide. Contactability is a huge problem. Some ISPs have no contact details on their sites or only details of other departments which do not always know who deals with takedowns. At an EU (Europol, DG SANCO) or International (Interpol) level, a central body should collate the “takedown” contacts for all of the 4000+ ISPs, social networks and search engines on behalf of the enforcement community.

SPECIFIC ECRIME CONCERNS

COUNTERFEITS

I would highlight www.brand-i.org/. It is hoped that this can aid the fight against the influx of Chinese websites selling counterfeit, using co.uk domains to pretend to be a UK business.

Redress After Scams

No matter the comprehensiveness of education some will always be victim to scams or illegal “business” practices. Court is not an option due to costs and the international nature of scams. Credit cards are used for 40% of online transactions; debit cards 35%, with PayPal being the third most popular.5 More people are opting to use an eMoney provider, as it masks their financial details and it saves time at the checkout, so we are seeing a continuous increase in the market share of eMoney providers.6

One would normally make a claim with a debit or credit card provider under the Chargeback rules or s75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. Further details on both of the Chargeback and s75 provisions is set out in the FOS advice page.

BUT The Financial Ombudsman Service position is that section 75 protection does not apply where PayPal or any eMoney service becomes involved in the credit card transaction. This leaves consumers with no recourse to pursue their complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service. They only have recourse with the courts. I would EMPHASISE—this is not just an eBay or Amazon issue. This said, with over £3bn in sales annually and these two sites representing a siginificant portion of UK ecommerce the issue would be worthy of our attention even if it did only affect eMarketplaces.

A growing number of UK retailers are including an eMoney payment option in their checkouts:

PayPal used by 976 of the UK and 572 of the US major stores.

Skrill (Moneybookers) used by over 135,000 merchants.

When 52% of the adult population have a PayPal account, UK online retailers naturally feel obliged to offer PayPal on its websites.

The key issues which determine the applicability of section 75 are identified very clearly in Office of Fair Trading v Lloyds TSB Bank Plc and others [2006] EWCA Civ 268 7 and the Bank of Scotland v Alfred Truman (a firm) [2005] [EWHC] 583 (QB). This is legal authority that section 75 protection does exist where one has paid on credit card for a product, via an eMoney service.

Similarly, the majority of consumers using debit cards can rely upon chargeback protection where there is a breach of contract:

There has been unauthorised use of the buyer’s card.

The buyer didn’t receive the item that was paid for.

There were errors in processing the transaction.

The buyer is dissatisfied with the item as it does not match the description.

As per Truman,8 where section 75 applies this in turn means that the chargeback scheme will operate.

Empty Parcel Scam

Some sellers and buyers (returning products) “play the system” by simply sending an envelope or empty box which is recorded delivery or has a certificate of posting from their Post Office. It is difficult for recipients to dispute this as the sender has evidence of posting/delivery. No weight is recorded with post office receipts which now act as a certificate of posting and IF weight is recorded with recorded delivery, this information is not included in the details posted online. This can cause issues for eBay millions of users as PayPal only accepts online proof of delivery. It is also an issue for UK ecommerce as consumers have the legal right9 to return products without reason, thus it is a route for rogue buyers to purchase products and return “empty” boxes.

We recommend exploring whether postal services could include weight of package on a certificate of posting AND for recorded delivery this information is made available online to 3rd parties, so they can identify such scams and provide a more equitable service to the recipients.

Theft of financial details by Rogue Sites

Best countered by eMoney Services which hide consumer financial details. This market needs to be competitive. I am of the opinion that the market is not competitive due to eBay tying users to its own PayPal eMoney service. eBay is 95% of the world online auction market. Forcing its users to use PayPal has likely contributed to PayPal gaining 20% of global ecommerce sales.

The market must be competitive if eMoney services are to work to their benefit. Portability between eMoney services is something to consider so consumers can easily change service where they get a bad deal. Improving the market will encourage more consumers to opt into using these services and the benefit form the security of masking their financial details.

Note that Alipay (700 million registered accounts) is being rolled out globally, which may have an effect on which eMoney provider non-eBay sites include in their checkouts. This will have no effect on eBay sites (which will continue to push users towards PayPal) nor Amazon sites (which will continue to push users towards its own Amazon Payments). However, it is argued that most consumers would be reluctant to change eMoney provider once they have chosen one due to the burden of registering all of their personal and financial details with another provider. Thus, a new entrant to the market will have to offer great incentives for consumers to change provider.

SPAM

There is an ever increase in scam spam emails, offering wonder drugs, cheap degrees and other cons. Most email providers allow you to block a spam email AFTER you have identified that type of email as spam or email sender to be a spammer. Spammers use countless email addresses so you will never overcome the issue that way.

Consumers ought to be provided with the right to positively discriminate which emails they will accept eg, a list of their trusted email addresses. Anyone else emailing them will be informed that they only accept emails from known associates.

I recommend the promotion of white lists, primarily for vulnerable internet users, which block all emails except those from named friends/family.

It is likely that there is some cross-over with criminals using spim (unsolicited text messages) as well as spam for their frauds. This is only going to become a larger problem, as there is an ever increase in mobile users—77% mobile users in 2002 compared with 43% 1999.10 Also, more people are opting for pre-paid (81%) rather than subscription mobiles (31%).11

The volume of “spim” was set to triple in 2004, according to a report from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm in Palo Alto, California. The company projected that 1.2 billion spims would be sent, 70% of which are porn-related.12 A survey conducted by QQ.com, one of China’s largest news portals, showed 98.1% of people 13 received spims every day, with about 20% getting three to five in 24 hours.

The European Council recommended in May 2003 that Member States consider a set of appropriate requirements for tracing the use of prepaid card technology in connection with organised crime.14

Recital 43 of 2002/58/EC [Processing of Personal Data and the Protection of Privacy in the Electronic Communications Sector Directive15 provides:

To facilitate effective enforcement of Community rules on unsolicited messages for direct marketing, it is necessary to prohibit the use of false identities or false return addresses or numbers while sending unsolicited messages for direct marketing purposes.

As prepay mobiles can be used to send unsolicited text messages (“spim”), effective enforcement is currently hampered in EU countries due to the lack of appropriate recording of mobile prepay subscriber details. Whilst this Directive is generally aimed at the use of mobiles by businesses, how are Communication Service Providers to know what use will be made of a mobile once sold?

It is clear from the EC’s Report, Regulatory Framework & Market Developments concerning Directory Services in EU and EEA member states, that a lot of effort is required by EU member states alone. The report highlighted that EU “mobile operators often know little about their prepay customers, not even their name and addresses”.16

“Spam” regulations (2002/58/EC) and part of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (para 26, schedule 1—persistent and unwanted solicitations by telephone) are almost unenforceable.

“To facilitate effective enforcement of Community rules on unsolicited messages for direct marketing, it is necessary to prohibit the use of false identities or false return addresses or numbers while sending unsolicited messages for direct marketing purposes.” (Recital 43 of 2002/58/EC)

In the US, one in six 17 mobile phone users report receiving unsolicited text messages on their phones from advertisers. The US legislated.18

Businesses can set up numerous different pay-as-you-go mobile accounts to use for sending unsolicited messages. It is practically impossible to identify the owners of these mobiles as the phones need not be registered as is the case with contract phones. Pay-as-you-go mobiles are always the preferred choice of criminals and scammers. Without subscriber details, the Directive cannot be effectively enforced and it is very difficult to pursue other offences where these mobiles are used.

This is a larger problem for all law enforcement. It’s arguable that the UK Police are now capable of overcoming this problem by using Triangulation techniques (a method of pinpointing a mobile’s location), however with Triangulation costs ranging up to £2500 a time this may be disproportionate to the crime. Trading Standards do not have access to Triangulation techniques under RIPA, and may have no other method to trace an offender. We do not have stats for the UK but of the 80,000 identity-requests in Switzerland 30,000 were prepaid mobile phones. I note that 130.000 users of prepaid mobile phones refused to register their phone.

Examples of countries that have legislated registration:

Australia—legislated mandatory registration in 2000.

Japan’s19 Vodafone K.K—registration in 2004.

India,20 Switzerland and Brazil all have registration requirements for prepay phones and/or phone cards.

It is worth noting that there were discussions within the E-Money Directive Consultation on a requirement for mandatory registration of prepay mobiles, with regards to the Money Laundering aspects of the Directive, however we understand that industry argued strongly against this.

In June 2009, three major Chinese carriers—China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom—imposed limits on text messaging in order to crack down on spam SMS. Under the restrictions, a phone number can send no more than 200 messages per hour and 1000/day on weekdays.21

I recommend:

an exploration into the links between spammers and spimmers;

an investigation into whether the anonyminity of pay-as-you-go mobiles is causing difficulty in enforcing the 2002/58/EC Directive and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC relating to persistent and unwanted solicitations by telephone;

the implementation of a low limit eg, 10, for the number of messages any mobile may send in a day UNLESS the user registers the mobile.

SPAM 2

As with SPIM, I recommend the implementation of a low limit eg, 10, for the number of emails that may be sent daily from unregistered/unverified email addresses eg, Hotmail. There would be no, or a lesser, restriction for verified email addresses. You may explore the average number of emails sent from a typical business email account to identify what may be a “reasonable” number to set this higher restriction at.

Fake Medicines

50% of medicines purchased from websites concealing their address are fake say World health Organisation (WHO 22).

Obviously there are benefits for those who are house bound to shop online and have medicines home-delivered. I recommend the use of one logo used by all EU online medicine retailers, along with a licence number that can be easily verified online. One logo will increase consumer awareness and lower barriers to cross-border purchasing. It is preferable if web crawlers are capable of automatically verifying misuse of licence numbers on such websites

Notice and Takedowns

Government has been slow to provide national, strategic leadership in dealing with the practicalities of the legislation (regulation 22 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002). Regulators, law enforcement and industry have been left to devise their own Notice and Takedown templates. The lack of guidance has left the majority of Council Trading Standards Officers uncertain as to powers available for Notice and Takedowns and what wording they could use in any such notice.

eg of issue. An IAWG member took around 1 week of research and phone calls to identify the relevant host of a fraudulent website; sent three emails to two different email addresses over a period of five months. A year later the website was still operating unchanged. With no victim and no financial loss the Council Trading Standards Officer did not pursue it any further and is now reluctant to become entangled in further Notice and Takedowns for other cases.

Issue re: Takedowns—Deleting illegal sites is more efficient than blocking them says Eco, the Association of German Internet Economy.23 The opinion of one IAWG member who considers himself moderately IT skilled is that it is simple to locate and use proxy websites. There are 400,000 pages of guidance on how to “Access Blocked Websites using Proxy Servers”.24

I recommend one EU-wide Notice and Takedown template for use by law enforcement and industry to provide a consistent approach to ISPs and assist those Council Trading Standards Officers who may lack the knowledge of such procedures and powers. EU should engage international partners to explore an international template.

ISPA recommended that a code of practice should be developed for Notice and take-down procedures, underpinned by statute—paragraph 2.62.

UK has the most deregulated system for domain registration in the EU

Foreign based companies hide behind a .uk domain name, leading consumers to believe they are dealing with a UK company and enjoying all the protections they expect from their “home” jurisdiction.

A .co.uk domain name says the information available on the web site is local, relevant and most of all trusted. “The most popular way of checking whether a site was in the UK was to see if the website address was “co.uk” (cited by 41%). Likewise, most participants in our consumer focus groups assumed that a “co.uk” in the address indicated a UK site, although they also looked for clues like language, prices in pounds, and a UK address or phone number.25

This trust has led to:

Police has this week shut down 1,219 bogus websites.htm

Police have suspended 2,000 .co.uk domains.htm

There are 600,00026 .uk domains registered to foreign registrants. Nominet have consulted on changing the requirements to prohibit a foreign registrant registering a .uk domain, however this would not prevent foreign businesses from owning/using that domain and so the above criminality will continue.

SUGGESTION: A number of businesses27 provide details of the legal entity at the bottom of every page so any user can clearly identify the contracting party at any given page that they are accessing. I do not propose such “disclaimers” on every page, but consider that a statement on the homepage is a reasonable and proportionate step that is necessary to avoid any confusion. An effective disclaimer stating that the business is a Chinese or German etc Company would be required on the homepage.28

Training

Must be more regional internet forensic specialists to assist each agency. These regional experts should be available to all Law Enforcement Agencies & regulators.

SPECIFIC EMARKETPLACE CONCERNS

eMarketplaces

Online marketplaces, or eMarketplaces, are websites that provide the facility for consumers and/or businesses to sell products, whether this is fixed-price or auction style listings. These sites are used by consumers to sell their unwanted household goods and national companies as an additional online presence. Online marketplaces in the UK are a multi-billion pound industry. There are at least 309 million registered users worldwide that may list on UK sites and over 40% of active internet users visit eMarketplaces at least once a month.

eMarketplaces play a major role in consumer shopping. In 2012, Amazon and eBay made up 26.2% of all online traffic to UK shopping sites. eBay alone has a 19.2% share of all UK online retail visits with 22.2 million unique users per month.

Most users are honest, however there is a significant element of criminal activity. I would want to encourage eMarketplaces to share data on banned users (counterfeiters, fraudsters etc) with each other. A criminal can defraud ebay users; ebay ban them, they then go on to defraud Amazon users. They can hop from one eMarketplace to another until they go through all 80 UK eMarketplaces. At which point (after perhaps 12 months or so) they may be able to start over again with eBay using new financial and IP address details, making it very difficult for eBay and other eMarketplaces to identify that they are the same banned offender.

I also enclose at appendix 1 some stats on the level of eCommerce, eMarketplaces and eCrime in the UK.

APPENDIX 1

eCommerce in the UK

£47.2bn was spent online in the UK alone in 2009. It was forecasted that sales would reach £56bn by 2014, but they already reached £68bn in 2011.

UK is the biggest country in Europe for business to consumer online spending, with 79% of consumers buying online—we each spend around €1333 each year on the Internet.

UK represents over 30% of European online sales.

37 million shoppers spent £12.9bn in the 2011 Xmas period.

online shopping now accounts for 17% of the total UK retail market.

UK eCommerce to represent 12.4% of GDP by 2016.

eCommerce Worldwide

By 2012 it is expected that more than 1 trillion will be spent online by B2C consumers.

UK, Germany, France and Italy—represented 69% of the estimated $122 billion online retail spending in Western Europe in 2010.

40% of EU consumers buying online.

eMarketplaces in the UK

40% of active internet users visit eMarketplaces at least once a month;

Amazon and eBay made up 36% of all online traffic to UK shopping sites. eBay have a 19.2% share of all UK online retail visits;

eBay took 9.8% (the highest) and Amazon 8.6% of 96 million UK Internet visits on Boxing Day alone;

190,000 SMEs on eBay; achieved £446m sales in 2010;

Amazon.co.uk, with five million customer accounts, was responsible for 16.6% of all UK e-commerce in 2002;

93 eMarketplaces serving UK consumers;

Amazon went from 4.7 million transactions in Nov/Dec 2001 to three million transactions in one day in 2011;

Amazon is no.1 and no.6 in the top 100 e-retailers by site traffic and generated sales of more than £3.3bn in 2011;

70% of the adult population already use eBay, with 17 million unique users per month;

159 million-pound businesses trading on eBay;

over 100 high-street retailers, including Tesco and Argos, use eBay as an additional sales channel;

over 81million29 product listings at any one time;

eBay predict sales of $10 billion just via a mobile device in 2012; and

Amazon.co.uk, Britain’s biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in 2011.

eMarketplaces Worldwide

12.5 million transactions are completed on eMarketplaces daily.

25 million entrepreneurs and SMEs on eBay.

In 2004, $54.3bn was spent on US auctions across 1 billion listings. In 2010, the total value of goods sold on eBay alone was $62 billion.

eBay is the World’s 2nd largest online retailer with 16% share of the online retail space; commands 95% of the global auction listings market; 97 million active users; 100,000 new buyers joining their network across the world every day; 200 million live product listings.

50 million downloads of eBay apps in the past year.

In Q4, 2010 Amazon sales were $12.95 billion. In four years they doubled from 76 million active customers accounts to 152 million.

Amazon has 144 million active customer accounts; two million active seller accounts, which represent 29% of all sales. Amazon is growing at around 50% year on year.

eBay revenue rose 29% to $3.28 billion for the first-quarter of 2012.

Taobao (owned by Alibaba)—370 million registered users; 800 million product lines; 50 million unique visitors a day in 2010. Taobao’s sellers are behind 70% of the China’s $80bn of online transactions. Taobao made up 71% of Chinese consumer online purchases in 2011.

eMoney in the UK

52% of the adult population have a PayPal account.

eMoney Worldwide

867 million amongst just four providers.

eMoney Provider	Stats
PayPal	2.6 million customers in 2000. Now 26 million accounts in the UK—equivalent to about 52% of the adult population. 95% of eBay’s 32m listings on the site already offer PayPal eBay’s Profit Jumps 20% on PayPal Gains PayPal accounts for 20% of the global eCommerce sales of which 33% occur via a mobile phone, with more than 117 million active accounts in 190 markets. Accepted by over 165,000 sites in Europe alone
Moneybookers	30 million customers worldwide, 135,000 merchants
Google Checkout	20 million Google Checkout in US. No global figures available
Alipay	700 million registered accounts and being rolled out globally
TOTAL	867 million users

eCrime in the UK

around £800m worth of counterfeit goods, and often unsafe items such as medicines and electrical goods, pass through online shopping and auction sites in the UK each year;

12 million UK users of counterfeit software;

estimated £5 billion worth of stolen goods are “for sale” in the UK at any one time;

80%–90% of crime on the internet is believed to be fraud-related;

45% of the 49,037 fraud and internet crime reports to Action Fraud were enabled online;

UK ranks 2nd only to the USA for the number of cybercriminals worldwide;

UK ranks 2nd for financial losses due to phishing and pharming attacks;

cyber crime costs the UK £27bn per annum—£21bn affecting business; £3.1bn affecting citizens;

UK consumers spending over £740,000 on fake medicines per annum;

100 active fake escrow websites globally at any given time, with UK losses estimated at $10 million annually;

6% of broadband subscribers had a botnet on their machine in 2010;

21,377 web sites were taken down in 2011 by the PCeU Internet Governance Team;

UK worst record in Europe for identity fraud; and

eCrime costs e-retailers £205 million annually.

eCrime Worldwide

Over half of Europe’s electronics retail sites break consumer protection laws. Similar issues two years on—57% sites not reimbursing original delivery costs.

81% of counterfeiters purchase their fakes online, with 41% of those purchasing from other online marketplaces (2008).

33% increase in internet fraud in US.

50% of medicines purchased from websites concealing their address are fake (WHO).

Up to 560,000 people victims of phishing sites annually.

four-fold increase in companies reporting security incidents with a financial impact” between 2007 and 2010.

Taobao Marketplace removed 63 million pirate products in 2011.

“Auction” Crime in the UK

eBay alone removed 2.21m potentially counterfeit listings and suspended 30,000 sellers in one year.

On a given day, there are over five million illegal listings on UK eMarketplaces which attempt to restrict consumer rights, which equate to an estimated consumer harm of £349.6 million per annum

“Auction” Crime Worldwide

online auction fraud was the most reported “internet” offence in 2007, accounting for 35% of all reports; and

there were 250,000 victims of auction fraud daily during 2004.

Annex30