Americans are losing billions due to internet crime every year

WASHINGTON: The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its 2019 Internet Crime Report which found that the last calendar year saw both the highest number of complaints and the highest dollar losses reported since cybercrime statistics were first documented back in 2000.

The FBI logged a total of 467,361 complaints in the US in 2019, an average of 1,300 per day, with the most frequent internet crimes phishing, non-payment/non-delivery scams and extortion. Since 2000, 4,883,231 complaints about internet crime have been recorded in total, reported foreign media on Monday.

Unsurprisingly, financial losses to individuals and businesses are rising steadily given the uptake in reported crimes.

The FBI report states that $3.5 billion was lost during the last calendar year, an increase on the $2.7 billion lost in 2018. In 2019, the costliest complaints involved business email compromise, romance or confidence fraud and spoofing or mimicking the accounts of people or vendors.

Donna Gregory, the chief of IC3, said that in 2019 the FBI didn’t see an uptick in new types of fraud but rather saw criminals deploying new tactics and techniques to carry out existing scams. Gregory said that "criminals are getting so sophisticated" before adding that "it is getting harder and harder for victims to spot the red flags and tell real from fake".

Internet crime isn't just an American problem and IC3 also released data showing the number of complaints in other countries. The United Kingdom was the worst country by number of victims after the US with 93,796.