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FBI: The Most Perpetrated Cybercrime Is Not What You Think

A dive into the reported Cybercrime stats show ransomware and phishing are not as big a threat as extortion, data breaches, and simply not getting what you paid for.

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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Time for another dive into the giant set of stats provided by the FBI's  Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) annual report from 2018 (the latest).

This time, the folks at Hotspot Shield/Pango took a look at the info state by state to see which type of cybercrime hurts most in your area. More than 50 percent of the 50 states pegged nondelivery or nonpayment for goods or services as the number-one problem (see the chart above). Extortion is bad for about 20 percent—that's 10 states plus the District of Columbia. (Imagine that, extortion in DC.)

It turns out the high-profile crimes we read about a lot, such as phishing scams and ransomware are way down on the list. 

Nonpayment/nondelivery was not where the most money was lost, however. Investment scams were up with loss per victim average of around $2.4 million. That's a total of $252.9 million for the year; but for the biggest loss overall, look to business email compromise (BEC) and email account compromise (EAC), that special form of fraud where a business or individual is fooled into not only falling for the scam but also sending money to the scammer. That cost around $1.3 billion total for the year 2018.  Total cybercrime loss in 2018: $2.7 billion.

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TOP INTERNET CRIMES FROM 2017 TO 2018

Back to the states: North Carolina ($13K per victim on average) and Minnesota ($10.3K per victim) were hit worst. The states with the least cybercrime were Alaska and Maine.

Related


AVERAGE MONETARY LOSSES DUE TO CRIME BY STATE 2018

Take the victim's age into consideration, and it's clear that the elderly are the hardest-hit victims. They account for the most monetary loss per victim ($10,457) and the most loss total for the year ($649.2 million), and were the most victimized in the most states.


AGE GROUP EXPERIENCING THE MOST INTERNET CRIME BY STATE

For more on the types of scam that befell some of those people and other age groups, as well as other details from the FBI's stats, read the full report at HotspotShield.com.

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About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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