many of whom begin involvement in cybercrime in late teenage years. Globally, cybercrime acts show a broad distribution across financial-driven acts, and computer-content related acts, as well as acts against the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of computer systems. Perceptions of relative risk and threat vary, however, between Governments and private sector enterprises. Currently, police-recorded crime statistics do not represent a sound basis for cross-national comparisons, although such statistics are often important for policy making at the national level. Two-thirds of countries view their systems of police statistics as insufficient for recording cybercrime. Police-recorded cybercrime rates are associated with levels of country development and specialized police capacity, rather than underlying crime rates. Victimization surveys represent a more sound basis for comparison. These demonstrate that individual cybercrime victimization is significantly higher than for ‘conventional’ crime forms. Victimization rates for online credit card fraud, identity theft, responding to a phishing attempt, and experiencing unauthorized access to an email account, vary between 1 and 17 per cent of the online population for 21 countries across the world, compared with typical burglary, robbery and car theft rates of under 5 per cent for these same countries. Cybercrime victimization rates are higher in countries with lower levels of development, highlighting a need to strengthen prevention efforts in these countries. Private sector enterprises in Europe report similar victimization rates – between 2 and 16 per cent – for acts such as data breach due to intrusion or phishing. Criminal tools of choice for these crimes, such as botnets, have global reach. More than one million unique IP addresses globally functioned as botnet command and control servers in 2011. Internet content also represented a significant concern for Governments. Material targeted for removal includes child pornography and hate speech, but also content related to defamation and government criticism, raising human rights law concerns in some cases. Almost 24 per cent of total global internet traffic is estimated to infringe copyright, with downloads of shared peer-to-peer (P2P) material particularly high in countries in Africa, South America, and Western and South Asia. Legislation and frameworks Legal measures play a key role in the prevention and combating of cybercrime. These are required in all areas, including criminalization, procedural powers, jurisdiction, international cooperation, and internet service provider responsibility and liability. At the national level, both existing and new (or planned), cybercrime laws most often concern criminalization, indicating a predominant focus on establishing specialized offences for core cybercrime acts. Countries increasingly recognize, however, the need for legislation in other areas. Compared to existing laws, new or planned cybercrime laws more frequently address investigative measures, jurisdiction, electronic evidence and international cooperation. Globally, less than half of responding countries perceive their criminal and procedural law frameworks to be sufficient, although this masks large regional differences. While more than two-thirds of countries in Europe report sufficient legislation, the picture is reversed in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, where more than two-thirds of countries view laws as only partly sufficient, or not sufficient at all. Only one half of the countries, which reported that laws were insufficient, also indicated new or planned laws, thus highlighting an urgent need for legislative strengthening in these regions. The last decade has seen significant developments in the promulgation of international and regional instruments aimed at countering cybercrime. These include binding and non-binding instruments. Five clusters can be identified, consisting of instruments developed in the context of, or xviii

Select target paragraph3