According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), $16.6 billion has been lost in cybercrimes in 2024, which is a 33% increase from 2023 when $12.5 billion were lost in cybercrimes. On the other hand, the cybercrime complaints on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center have dropped in 2024, and it received 860,000 complaints in the last year. The report by the FBI also found that the most affected group by these cybercrimes is people above 60 years of age.
The highest number of complaints (147,000) was filed by people above 60, and $4.8 billion was lost. This amounts to a loss of $32,600 per person, which is higher than the overall loss of $19,300 per complaint. These findings are alarming because the FBI has taken more serious measures to control cyber crimes in 2024 and also targeted major threats like LockBit. Other major cybercrime threats targeted by the FBI were illicit online markets and botnets, scam call centers, and laundering rings, and it also arrested hundreds of cybercriminals involved.
The cybercrime which the second most brunt in losses was Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, which caused $2.9 billion in losses with 21,489 complaints, which equals to loss of $135,000 per complaint. Even though ransomware is also getting common, there were only 3,156 reported cases of it, with losses of $12.5 million. Some other big losses came through personal data breaches, tech support scams, government impersonation scams, and romance scams.
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The highest number of complaints (147,000) was filed by people above 60, and $4.8 billion was lost. This amounts to a loss of $32,600 per person, which is higher than the overall loss of $19,300 per complaint. These findings are alarming because the FBI has taken more serious measures to control cyber crimes in 2024 and also targeted major threats like LockBit. Other major cybercrime threats targeted by the FBI were illicit online markets and botnets, scam call centers, and laundering rings, and it also arrested hundreds of cybercriminals involved.
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The cybercrime which the second most brunt in losses was Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, which caused $2.9 billion in losses with 21,489 complaints, which equals to loss of $135,000 per complaint. Even though ransomware is also getting common, there were only 3,156 reported cases of it, with losses of $12.5 million. Some other big losses came through personal data breaches, tech support scams, government impersonation scams, and romance scams.
Read next: Big Tech Giants Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta Drained 132 Million Cubic Meters of Water, Filling 52,938 Olympic Pools!
