China’s massive Internet community has led to lucrative opportunities for cybercriminals, with online fraud cases rising more than 30 percent per year between 2011 and 2014, according to a report from the Beijing-based Legal Daily.
Data from the China Internet Network Information Center pegged the country's online population at 668 million in June, offering a big pool of targets for criminal elements, the report said.
According to the Ministry of Public Security, the number of fraud cases in China skyrocketed from 100,000 in 2011 to 400,000 in 2014, with the financial losses caused by online fraud in 2014 estimated at more than 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion).
In its latest annual report, Web portal Tencent said that criminals involved in illegal activities online have become more organized.
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting smartphone users, with nearly 200 million phones infected with malicious software, the Tencent report said.
The growing attacks on online databases have allowed scammers to steal personal information that helps them target and reach victims more easily, it added.
The Legal Daily also noted the existence of a group of people who create and sell fake online accounts and identities.
Since Chinese law does not clearly state that creating and selling fake Web accounts is illegal, hundreds of thousands of people operate in this gray area, the report said.
Fake accounts can be sold for several yuan and cover major online services in China, including e-commerce sites Alibaba and JD.com, social networking portals offered by Sina and Tencent, game websites and even ride-hailing app Uber, it added.
The paper also pointed out the prevalence of criminal activities such as performing fake online marketing or recruitment campaigns to collect user data, sending fraudulent offers via ecommerce sites and stealing traffic from other sites.