• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, March 15, 2017

At least for the moment, cyber criminals are far less likely to pose as mobile users than desktop users.  

Indeed, 82% of fraudulent online accounts originated from desktop machines compared with 18% from mobile platforms, according to fresh findings from security research firm DataVisor.

Consistent with previous research, the report also notes that Android remains the preferred mobile platform for cyber criminals. In, fact, an account on an Android platform is eight times more likely to be fraudulent than an account on an iOS device, DataVisor finds.

Regardless of platform, cyber criminals are thriving, according to Yinglian Xie, co-founder and CEO of DataVisor. “The Fraud Economy is flush with billions of dollars in resources,” Xie warns in the report. “It’s no longer just one malicious user causing trouble, but rather massively funded armies numbering in the hundreds who are providing a big payout for these bad actors.”

Not surprisingly, these “armies” are partial to social media channels. As DataVisor reports, those targeting social platforms are 17 times larger than those targeting financial services.

DataVisor’s report, which spans the last six months of 2016, is based on analysis of its telemetry network, which it says spans more than one billion users across 172 countries.