FBI Releases 2021 Internet Crime Report

The FBI runs something called the IC3 or the Internet Crime Complaint Center. While they do occasionally catch bad guys, their main objective (they might argue with this) is to understand how big the problem is and share information with a lot of other law enforcement agencies. The bad news is that the problem is huge.

Last year people reported almost $7 billion in Internet crime – specifically…

Note that business email compromise attacks and email account compromises represents a third of the total.

But look at the growth curve. Between 2017 and 2021, the dollar value of crimes reported grew by 500%.

Now look at crimes REPORTED by age. This doesn’t necessarily map to actual crime numbers, but it could. It may just mean that older people are more likely to report crimes or it could mean that older people are better targets. Still it is a very interesting set of facts.

The report has more detailed information, but the big takeaways should be the dollar value of the crime and the shape of the curve. Neither of those is terribly comforting.

That means that it is up to you and me to educate ourselves and our families, add layers of security and think before we act.

Sources:

IC3 report: https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2021_IC3Report.pdf

The Record and the FBI

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