Can you afford to lose $19,372 or more to scammers?
Of course not! This is exactly the reason I started the Cyber Safe Center newsletter. I don’t want you to be a victim to any scammers or digital threat. Even $1 would be too much.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released it’s Internet Crime Report 2024 from their Internet Crime Complaint Center. In 2024 they received 859,532 complaints. I’m sure this is a small percentage of people who have actually been scammed; there are likely tens of millions of internet crimes that go unreported each year. For example, I know that Facebook Marketplace–where people buy and sell things every day–is seeing a significant increase in scams and most of those probably don’t get reported to the FBI. (I’ll do a separate article in the future on Facebook Marketplace scams.)
In 2024, the FBI report states we lost $16.6 billion to internet crimes, up from $12.5B in 2023. This is real money lost by people who earn their living a respectable way. Our parents, our kids, our family, and our friends scammed by criminals. It’s astounding.
The report provides a breakdown of the total loss per age group. Not every complaint had an age range associated with it so these numbers won’t total to $16.6B, but they are still way too high in my opinion.
- Under 20 years of age, $22.5 million
- 20-29, $540.1 million
- 30-39, $1.4 billion
- 40-49, $2.2 billion
- 50-59, $2.5 billion
- 60+, $4.8 billion
For the people in my age group (50-59), there were 84,540 complaints for a loss of $2.5 billion. That’s an average of $29,571.80! I can’t imagine losing even a hundred dollars. Many people lost hundreds of thousands of dollars!
What tactics do the scammers use?
The top four crime types in 2024 were from phishing/spoofing, extortion, personal data breach, and non-payment/non-delivery scams. Malware like computer viruses only accounted for 441 complaints compared to the 193,407 phishing/spoofing complaints. This is personal, folks. They are going after people–not our computers–because we are easier targets.
If you are a victim of internet crime, please report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
I can’t stop scammers. All I can do is raise awareness. Please help by forwarding the Cyber Safe Center newsletter to your family and friends. I don’t want any of us to be victims.