Every year, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) branch puts out an annual cybercrime report, a dense document on all the complaints it has received in the previous calendar year on various forms of cybercrime. It's never a fun read. With complaints hitting an all-time high of 791,790 (up 45%), to the tune of $4.2 billion dollars lost to cybercrime, the 2020 report is the scariest yet. (It should send you scurrying to get a VPN and a password manager and to activate two-factor authentication.)
The folks at Security.org have put out a report on the IC3 stats called the State-by-State Breakdown of Cybercrime in America. It also includes data from the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel Network.
Complaints in the report cover not only cybercrime but also ID theft and fraud, which don't necessarily have to be digital but usually are. ID theft, in particular, hit the roof in 2020. Why? Thank COVID-19, of course. Not that this is too shocking, since complaints have been increasing steadily since 2016.
The most common of the reported cybercrimes are phishing scams and their ilk; that's one in every three calls to the IC3. But cybervillains don't make a lot of money phishing. Scammers prefer to fully compromise a business email—that's where the money is. The average take is $96,373 for that, compared to $225 when phishing, vishing, smishing, or pharming. But phishing is easy.
Email is easy too, but phone calls are the number-one method used by criminals to scam people, no matter what they're pulling. And for good reason: A well-run phone scam earns criminals more money. The median loss to a phone scammer is $1,170 compared with $400 on email, $200 on social media, and $150 on a website or app.
Criminals have a special target audience of anyone age 40 or over. The money made from Gen X and baby boomers is much higher than the total from Gen Y/millennials (ages 25 to 39). Gen Z (24 and younger) are either not targeted much or are so savvy or cynical that they don't fall for scams. You can see the breakdown of average losses above.
State-by-state breakdowns show you where likely cybercrime targets lay. Per 100,000 population, Nevada experienced the highest number of reported cybercrimes, at 523. The lowest is Mississippi at 83. Both are in the top and bottom position for average cybercrime loss per victim as well. Nevada victims on average lost $33,954! With that many victims losing that much, every phone call and email to a resident of the state should be suspect, even it's from grandma.
Meanwhile, the District of Columbia leads when it comes to ID theft and fraud reports. Government-benefit ID theft—thanks to stimulus checks, most likely—is way up in every state. Florida is the lowest and still had an increase of 208%. Increases in Kansas: 33,236%.
You probably wonder where your state falls on the list. Security.org put together an interactive table that lets you click a state and see the stats.
If you've been the victim of cybercrime of any type (including ransomware), submit a complaint at ic3.gov.
For more, read 5 Ways Identity Theft Can Ruin Your Life and What to Do When You've Been Hacked.