Cases related to child pornography showed the largest increase
TOKYO—Japan’s national police agency has reported a marked increase in the amount of cyber-crime committed in 2009. With crime up almost 6 percent over 2008, police said they took some sort of official action, including arrests, in 6,690 cases during the year. The numbers are the highest on record since data was first collected in 2000.
The largest number of cases was for child pornography, which nearly doubled to 507, police said. Cases concerning the illegal access of bank websites and other database breaches jumped to 2,534 cases, surging by more than 45 percent and setting another record.
Cases of copyright infringements also rose by more than 30 percent, to 188 cases, but online auctions fraud, which had presented a serious problem, fell by 54 percent to 522 cases after major sites such as Rakuten and Yahoo improved their settlement systems. They now prevent sellers from being paid before goods are delivered.
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