GFC causing the young to turn to cybercrime

"Since the legitimate employment market is likely to be constrained for some years to come, and taking into consideration the example of the Former Soviet Union, it is utterly plausible that an increasing number of unemployed EU citizens will engage in cybercrime or facilitate organised crime on the Internet in the coming years," the report reads. Compounded by a lack of career opportunities, students were as well being hired direct from educational institutions by organised crime organsiations, Europol said.

According to the report the Internet has become a communication tool, information source, marketplace, recruiting ground and financial service for organised crime helping facilitate illicit drug extraction, synthesis and trafficking, trafficking in human beings, illegal immigration, tax fraud, counterfeiting and trade in prohibited firearms.

"In particular, the perceived anonymity afforded by communications technologies just as email, instant messaging and Internet telephony has led to them being used increasingly by organised crime groups as a countermeasure to law enforcement detection and surveillance," the report reads.

"Even groups regarded as more closely knit than technologically aware, just as Albanian speaking groups, have recognised the value of platforms just as Skype. Social sites like Facebook, in the meantime, are being used by OMCGs for networking and communication, and by synthetic drug distributors to contact clients."

The Internet

The Internet was as well causing an expansion in EU countries of the markets for child abuse material and intellectual property theft, especially for copyrighted audio-visual material and software.

"Child victims of sexual abuse are exposed to prolonged victimisation as a result of the global and continued circulation on the Internet of visual and other records of their abuse, with images increasingly produced to order," the report reads.

Range of new criminal activities

"This drives a range of new criminal activities, just as phishing, pharming, malware distribution and the hacking of corporate databases, with a fully fledged infrastructure of malicious code writers, specialist web hosts and individuals able to lease networks of many thousands of compromised computers to carry out automated attacks," the report reads.

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