Yahoo! boys make N500 billion annually — Expert Says

EMMANUEL AKINWUMI, Senior Correspondent
Abuja —

Cyber spammers, otherwise called Yahoo boys, make an annual income of N10 billion in Nigeria, of which the banking sector is said to be worst hit, losing about N7.8 billion to the scourge.
The various types of rampant cyber corrupt practices in the banking sector through which the banks lose huge sums of money include on-line financial fraud, identity theft, system penetration by outsiders, data and network sabotage and denial of service attacks.

Globally, the economic crime is costing the world economy sums in the region of over $500 billion annually.

The high rate of the crime in Nigeria has, however, been attributed to the lack of necessary legislation to deal with cybercrime.
The Chief Executive Officer of Global Network for Cyber Solution, a non-government and non-profit organization, Segun Olugbile made the disclosure in Abuja.

According to him, statistics show that there has been a significant increase in the figures over the past 30 years, adding that in 1970 the amount lost was approximately $5 billion, and rose to about $20 billion in 1980 and reached approximately $100 billion in 1990.

He lamented that Nigeria with the largest population of black people in the world does not have any reliable law to deal with cyber crime, but noted that the meeting of the organization held recently in Abuja after which a communiqué was released has proffered solutions to the problem.

According to him, part of the recommendations was that government should declare cyber crime and cyber security as a national emergency with conscious political will and special budgetary resources to effectively engage the challenges presented by its impact.

The meeting also wants the government to sponsor numerous bills and enact Acts to deal with the excesses of the pandemic.
Also, it called for the establishment of a national institute for cyberspace infrastructure protection, constitute a national standing committee on cyber crime and cyber security, among others.

Olugbile stated that there were reliable case studies to show that an attack on a national infrastructure “could by virtue of its catastrophic consequences, completely paralyze the machinery of Government.

Source