2021 Internet Crime Report. Only the Reported is Reported.
Internet-enabled crime is largely underreported. Those affected by cybercrime may not know how or where to report their victimization. Some are too embarrassed to report it while many others don't even know they've been victimized. Regardless of the reason, the majority of persons victimized by cybercriminals fail to report it to law enforcement. A 2020 crime survey of England and Wales suggested that only 16.6% of frauds are being reported and only 1.7% of those victimized by “computer misuse offenses” are self-reporting their victimization.
Businesses aren't much better at reporting their victimization. This 2019 report by global IT and cybersecurity association ISACA found that enterprise and other business entities are vastly under-reporting cybercrime victimization, even when legally mandated to notify law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
The underreporting of cybercrimes makes the 2021 Internet Crime Report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center even more remarkable.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is the cybercrime reporting and analysis mechanism for the Federal Burea of Investigation. The center facilitates an easy and efficient way for citizens and businesses to self-report their victimization and losses. The collected information is then analyzed to look for trends and investigative leads. The results are distributed to FBI field offices for follow-up investigation and for information releases to educate the public. Each year the organization creates a summary of the previous year's numbers and publishes it as the Internet Crime Report.
The 2021 Internet Crime Report follows the trend of its predecessors in revealing that cybercrime has increased from the previous year. In 2021, the IC3 accepted 847,376 reports which is a 7% increase over the number received in 2020. The reported dollar loss is greater than 6.9 Billion dollars.
Remember that cybercrime victimization is grossly underreported? Yeah, so what are the true numbers for 2021? It's mind-boggling.