New forms of fraud continues to grow according to the FBI

As part of my daily routine, I try my knowledge and skill on Factle.?Based on the global success of Wordle, Factle presents a different quiz every day, with the top five answers needed for a particular question, which you choose from a list.?In recent weeks we’ve had the most popular girls names in America, the countries who have won the FIFA World Cup the most and the highest paid actors in 2021.?But one quiz earlier this week caught my eye more than others as it related directly to what I do every day.

What were the most common forms of cybercrime in the USA in 2021 (according to a report by the FBI)?

?On my first guess I managed to get three of the top five, pleased that I picked out the top answer of Phishing/Vishing/Smishing which had nearly 324,000 reported victims in 2021.?On guess four I managed to get all the correct answers in the right order, which were:

1 - Phishing/Vishing/Smishing - 323,972 reported cases

2 - Non-Payment/Non-Delivery - 82,478 reported cases

3 - Personal Data Breach - 51,829 reported cases

4 - Identity Theft - 51,629 reported cases

5 - Extortion - 39,360 reported cases

It is no surprise to see Non-Payment/Non-Delivery fraud now the second most common.?The global COVID-19 pandemic saw us confined to home for long periods of time and having to rely on delivery services.?The tactic used by fraudsters to ask for small amounts of money, and in the process capturing financial information that can be used for bigger scams, has unfortunately been successful as it is believable – unsuspecting victims may be expecting deliveries and don’t associate a request for small amounts as fraud, but they are a gateway to much bigger and devastating actions.

Online fraud used to be centred around the 419 scam – so called after the Nigerian penal code that defines the crime.?We have all become accustomed to seeing the emails from a deposed general or crown prince, a dying benevolent stranger or as in one case I saw, a stranded astronaut (quite how he managed to send an email to me is another mystery) but they are still genuine threats – Confidence Fraud is the 6th most common (24,299 cases in 2021), whilst Lottery winning or Inheritance emails are lurking down the list in 19th with 5,991 cases.

Digital crime is all around us.?It is unusual for us to not see at least one attempt per day – we have become so conditioned to seeing some that we simply laugh them off, knowing that they are scams without being tricked into being a victim.?That in itself is good, as it shows that we have all increased our awareness to online fraud and know the classic signs of a scam.?However, the volume of attempted digital fraud still continues to rise, becoming more sophisticated, more targeted and more devastating for victims who are tricked. In other words, we can never afford to be complacent.

The war on digital fraud continues at a pace, with many companies proactively taking steps to identify and remove nefarious activities from those bad actors who are motivated to steal personal and financial information for their own gain.?A large number of these companies will use anti-fraud experts, such as OpSec Security, who offer the inside knowledge and solutions to mitigate the risks to their customers through proactive monitoring and laser-focused enforcement action, removing the threats from the eyeline of customers and ensuring that they don’t reappear.?

You can view the whole list here - https://app.openaxis.com/data/3795

To give Factle a go yourself, go to https://factle.app/