The Internet has something for everyone: information that was never before available on such a scale, entertainment, services, education – those are some of the good ones. Like most good things, it also has a dark side: pornography, hate, viruses and fraud stand out.

There are ways to avoid pornography and some hate sites – filtering software like Net Nanny and Cyberpatrol that you install on your computer - or a filtering service provided by your ISP. Virus protection programs like McAfee and Norton provide protection from viruses. Fraud is much harder to protect yourself from.

The Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) issued its first report on Internet fraud. It covers the six-month period from May 8, 2000 to Nov. 8, 2000. The IFCC is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

The top complaint reported was online auction fraud (66% of the complaints were in this category).

The next highest complaint was undelivered merchandise (22%).

The majority of losses were less than $500. Investment fraud led to the biggest losses. Auction fraud, despite being the largest culprit percentage-wise, had the lowest average losses.

E-mail was the method of initial contact for over 50 percent of fraud victims. Responses to Web pages were next with 38 percent of contacts. The leading methods of payment in fraud cases are money order and credit card.

More up-to-date information can be found at Internet Statistics where 1999 and 2000 statistics are compared.