The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) revealed that it has seen a massive 100% increase in cybercrime complaints over the past 14 months. When the IC3 first began recording complaints in 2000, it took 7 years to reach 1 million complaints. Since then, it has taken an average of 29.5 months for every additional million complaints.
Regarding the period between March 2020 and May 2021, IC3 observed a huge increase, by 1 million, in these types of complaints, in just 14 months.
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The FBI attributes the increase in complaints to the fact that cybercriminals are increasingly taking advantage of people working from home due to the pandemic, as well as the subsequent increase in attacks using COVID-19.
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The IC3 2020 Cybercrime Report states the following: “In 2020, while citizens focused on protecting their families from the pandemic and helping others in need, cybercriminals took advantage of the situation by finding an opportunity to take advantage of our dependence on technology to carry out crimes online. These criminals used various techniques such as phishing, spoofing, extortion, and various types of online fraud to target the most vulnerable citizens – people working in the healthcare sector looking for personal protective equipment, families looking for information about the global health crisis, and many others.”
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As part of the report, the FBI says the top three crimes reported in 2020 were phishing scams, non-payment/non-delivery scams, and extortion. However, victims lost the most money to BEC scams – with losses totaling $1.8 billion – romance scams – with losses totaling $600 million – and investment scams – with total losses totaling $336 million.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
