FBI IC3 Reflects on Trends over 20 Year History

In a posting notifying partners that it is marking its twentieth anniversary, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reflects on how cyber crime has evolved over the course of its history. In its first full year of operation, the IC3 logged nearly 50 complaints. Most of them revolved around internet auction fraud, non-delivery scams, and the infamous messages from alleged princes or princesses with untapped fortunes they wanted to share with recipients. Average losses for victims were low, compared to today’s numbers (in 2001, the average victim lost $435). “The more prevailing trend,” says IC3 Chief Donna Gregory, who has been with the IC3 since its founding, “is that those early, rudimentary scams have given way to more destructive and costly data breaches and network intrusions, ransomware, romance scams, and sophisticated financial crimes like business email compromise.” Criminals still target individuals, but businesses and organizations are becoming more common targets because of the potential of a larger payout. Losses recorded by the IC3 in recent years reflect the greater financial damage of this evolution. In 2019, victims reported more than $3.5 billion in losses – an average of $7,500 for each of the 467,361 complaints recorded that year. After 20 years with the IC3, Gregory has learned that the online environment will continue to change and that the criminals will adapt along with it. She worries about the trends she’s seeing in manipulated photos and videos but can never be certain where the next threat will emerge. Read the posting at FBI IC3.