Dramatic increase of online crimes

Cyber crime has been identified as posing a growing threat to Austrians.Federal Crime Office (BK) chief Gerhard Lang said today (Thurs) the number of internet fraud and abuse cases has soared from just 22 in the first nine months of 2009 to 1,074 in the same period of this year.Lang explained cases of stalking and fraud linked to activities on on-line community platforms was expected to rise further.”Facebook is a great tool for many people, but it also poses many risks,” he said.Lang further announced that the number of overall reported crimes in Austria dropped by 9.5 per cent year on year to 385,415 between January and September.He pointed out that there had been significantly fewer burglaries of houses and flats as the number of break-ins to family houses declined from 5,543 to 3,276, while the number of flat burglaries slid from 9,167 to 7.424 in the first three quarters of this year.Vienna was identified as the province with the worst success rate as just 30.3 per cent of overall reported crimes were solved. Vorarlberg did best among Austria’s nine provinces (56.9 per cent).