The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reported a substantial increase in the dollar value of losses due to internet crime for 2022. Losses from investments fraud, phishing, business email compromise (BEC), data breaches, malware, spoofing, identity theft, tech support scams, and the like increased to USD 10.3 billion from USD 6.9 billion in 2021, or 49%.
The FBI report identifies 27 types of internet fraud. Focusing on three crimes of concern for financial institutions, losses for them—BEC, payment mechanism fraud, and phishing—increased from 2021. In 2022, these three types accounted for 28% of all internet fraud losses, with BEC responsible for the largest share, 25%.
The report uses the term ‘credit card/check fraud’ to encompass ‘theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism (ACH, EFT, recurring charge, and more) as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction.’
Since 2018, the report shows that all internet fraud has increased 37%, BEC fraud 21%, payment mechanism fraud increased 31%m, and phishing increased 2%.
Looking at impact by incidence, phishing is one of the most prevalent type of internet fraud: more than 300,000 complaints submitted to the FBI in 2022 and five times more reported than the next type of internet fraud (personal data breach). Despite its low total dollar value, payment mechanism crime also is in the top 10 by number of complaints. These crimes mostly affect consumers, with lower average dollar values of losses: approximately USD 173 per incident for phishing and USD 11,500 for payment mechanism crime, compared to USD 126,000 for BEC, which of course affects business entities.
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