FBI’s Internet Crime Center registers over 2,000 complaints daily
Internet crime has been steadily increasing over the years as more people use the internet and hackers find new ways to attack vulnerable systems.
According to the recent Atlas VPN analysis, the FBI’s Internet Crime Center (IC3) registers about 2,331 complaints daily. The number of daily complaints was calculated by dividing a million by the number of days it took to reach 6 million from 5 million cybercrimes.
The data is provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s branch called Internet Crime Complaint Center. The IC3 collects and reports its data in an annual report and educates the public by sending out notices about new scams or upticks in certain crimes.
It took IC3 seven years to reach their first million complaints. However, the last million cybercrimes were recorded in only 429 days. So it takes less and less time to get another million complaints every year.
Of course, the increase in this number is not only because internet crime has become more common. Another reason is that people have become more aware of how and where to report such attacks. More reported cases help the FBI to investigate cyber-enabled crime more effectively.
Cybersecurity trends in 2021
The first half of 2021 has shown that cybercrime continues to evolve. For example, many ransomware attacks targeted huge companies, as this type of attack is a low-risk endeavor for hackers and an easy way to make some quick money.
One ransomware attack that stood out this year was the widely covered Colonial Pipeline attack in late April. Cybercriminals demanded a $4.4 million ransom in Bitcoin. Even though Colonial Pipeline paid the ransom, the FBI was able to recover most of the payment. Due to this attack, many Americans had to deal with gas shortages.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, phishing attacks were also prevalent among hackers. As many people started working from home or lost their jobs entirely, they became more susceptible to phishing scams. Threat actors sent out fake emails about stimulus checks or offered other financial help to people that suffered from the pandemic.
Now that vaccines have rolled out, many criminals see another opportunity to trick people into providing sensitive information. Criminals pretend to be government officials and offer to vaccinate residents sooner if they fill out documents with their personal data.
Similar or even more vicious cyberattacks will likely continue as many people, and companies still ignore the rising threat. Examples of cybercrime throughout the past years have shown that it is worth investing time and resources to counter threat actors and reduce cyber risks.
