Tuesday, April 30, 2019

The Rise in Internet Crime

How bad is internet crime getting? The FBI’s Internet Crime and Complaint Center received 50,000 more complaints in 2018 (351,936) than in 2017 (301,580), with losses from those complaints amounting to $2.7 billion, a $1.3 billion jump from the $1.4 billion in losses reported in 2017, according to the agency’s new crime report. The most prominent scams:
  • Payroll Diversion Scams: In 2018, the Internet Crime and Complaint Center, received over 100 payroll diversion complaints, resulting in losses of over $100 million. In these scams, criminals target employees through phishing emails designed to capture the employee’s login credentials, and the stolen credentials are then used to redirect their direct deposit information.
  • Extortion Schemes: In 2018, IC3 received over 51,000 complaints – a 242 percent increase over 2017 – about Internet extortion schemes, with losses totaling over $83 million. These schemes typically take the form of ransomware, denial of service attacks, network intrusions, and sextortion.
  • Tech Support Fraud: In 2018, IC3 received over 14,000 complaints related to tech support fraud, resulting in losses of approximately $40 million – an increase of over 160 percent from 2017. The majority of the victims in these schemes were elderly.

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