The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released their 2020 Internet Crime Report, which details a record number of 791,790 internet crime complaints that the department received in 2020. The report explains that the “IC3 aggregates related complaints to build referrals, which are forwarded to local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies for potential investigation.”
The highest number of complaints received (241,342) by far were related to phishing/pharming/vishing/smishing scams, which are “[t]he use of unsolicited email, text messages, and telephone calls purportedly from a legitimate company requesting personal, financial, and/or login credentials.” Following those, the next two highest amounts of complaints received were related to non-payment/non-delivery (108,869) and extortion (76,741). Along with providing the overview of the statistics and the work that was done to combat internet crimes, this report also gives advice to readers on how to avoid becoming victims of these crimes, as well as how to report potential illegal incidents.
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