https://darkmatters.norsecorp.com/2015/05/21/ic3-internet-crime-report-269422-complaints-with-800492073-in-losses/
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) – a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) – has released its annual report on Internet fraud and web-based crimes (PDF), stating it received a total of 269,422 complaints in 2014 for an estimated $800,492,073 in losses.
But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
“Millions of people in the United States are victims of Internet crimes each year. Only an estimated 15 percent of the nation’s fraud victims report their crimes to law enforcement , while the IC3 estimates less than 10 percent of victims file directly through ww.ic3.gov,” the report said.
Common scams reported to the IC3, which received an average of 22,000 complaints each month in 2014, include auto fraud, impersonation emails, intimidation and extortion scams, real estate fraud, confidence fraud and “romance scams,” as well as business email compromise campaigns.
The report reveals two growing Internet crime trends, the first being the increased use of social media to mine the personal data of potential targets, with a greater number of victims submitting complaints that document how social media was utilized to perpetrate frauds through social engineering.
Some of the fraudulent methods identified by the IC3 include:
- Clickjacking – Concealing hyperlinks beneath legitimate clickable content which, when clicked, causes a user to unknowingly perform actions, such as downloading malware, or sending personal information to a website. Numerous click-jacking scams have employed “Like” and “Share” buttons on social networking websites. Research other ways to use your browser options to maximize security
- Doxing – Publicly releasing a person’s identifying information online without authorization. Caution should be exercised by users when sharing or posting information about themselves, family, and friends
- Pharming – Redirecting users from legitimate websites to fraudulent ones for the purpose of extracting confidential data. Type in an official website, instead of “linking” to it from an unsolicited source
The second notable trend was related to the growing popularity of virtual currencies, which have attracted perpetrators who are seeking to capitalize on vulnerabilities in digital currency systems.
Popular crypto-currency scams reported to the IC3 in 2014:
- Victims not receiving their crypto-currency mining equipment or mining contracts after they paid for them. Crypto-Currency mining is the process of producing crypto or virtual currencies using computers. Computers are used to solve mathematical equations, generating crypto-coins
- Victims sending high performance computers to crypto-mining data centers to join others in a mining pool, only to be scammed by the operators. The losses included damages to computers during transit, receiving little or no crypto-coins from joining the datacenter pool, or having their computer stolen
- Other victims have reported hacking of their virtual wallets, and then being blackmailed to get their money back.
“The IC3—which houses well over three million complaints from consumers in its database—continues to encourage anyone who thinks they’ve been the victim of an Internet crime, regardless of dollar loss, to file a complaint through the IC3 website,” the FBI said.
“The more complaints it receives, the more effective it will be in helping law enforcement gain a more accurate picture of the extent and nature of Internet-facilitated crimes.”
