Sex, Lies and Cybercrime Surveys

According to Microsoft Researchers Cormac Herley and Dinei Florencio, cyber-crime estimates are based on unverified self-reported answers of one or two people and therefore, can any faith whatever be placed in the surveys we have? No, it appears not. Much of the information we have on cyber-crime losses is derived from surveys but how accurate these surveys are? In their paper called ‘Sex, Lies and Cybercrime Surveys’, Cormac and Dinei debate that survey’s representative sampling of a population does not give representative sampling of all losses, that reported losses are based on unverified reports which will distort the end results, and other reasons which you will find here – http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/149886/SexLiesandCybercrimeSurveys.pdf