Cybercrime encyclopedia

Cybercrime statistics

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Cybercrime encyclopedia

Cybercrime comes in many shapes and forms. To help you understand the dangers facing you online, we have prepared this Cybercrime Encyclopedia. It will act as a guide while you look over the cybercrime statistics.

Cybercrime statistics

Our cybercrime statistics illustrate just how widespread and affecting online criminal activities are. Who gets hurt? What is the damage? All is illustrated inside.

Types of cybercrimes

Confidence or romance scam

Confidence or romance fraud is a crime when a perpetrator tricks their victim into thinking they are in a relationship (family, friend, or romantic) to extort money, personal information, or anything else of value.

Credit card fraud

Credit card fraud is any form of theft or fraud committed using a credit card or a similar way of payment (Automated Clearing House, Electronic Funds Transfer, recurring charges, etc.).

Denial of service attack

A Denial of Service (DoS) is a cyberattack that floods a network or a system to slow it down with internet traffic. A Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) is a type of DoS that specifically targets voice services.

Discrimination

Discrimination is prejudice and unjust treatment of people by different categories like age, race, social status, ethnicity, sex, disability, or any other category a person can fall under.

Extortion

Extortion is an illegal way to get money (or anything else of value) from a person by intimidation, threats, blackmail, or undue exercise of authority.

Government impersonation

Government impersonation is a crime when someone pretends to be a government official to extort money from their victim.

Healthcare fraud

A healthcare-related crime is an attempt to take unlawful advantage of private or government healthcare programs that involve healthcare providers, companies, or individuals.

Identity theft

Identity theft is a crime when an individual’s personally identifiable information is acquired and then used without permission to commit further crimes like fraud, theft, and impersonation.

Informed robbery

Informed robbery is directly taking someone else’s money or possessions using force, threats, or intimidation.

Investment fraud

Investment fraud is a practice of manipulating investors with false information or claims into buying or investing.

Lottery scams

Prize scams (otherwise known as the lottery, sweepstakes, and inheritance scams) are scams that lie to people about winning lotteries and sweepstakes they never entered, or ask them to collect an inheritance from an unknown relative.

Malware

Malware (scareware, virus) is a piece of software or code that can infect any programmable device, service, network, or system with the intent to damage, disable, or destroy them, or steal the data stored inside.

Online harassment

Online harassment is a repeated unwanted action against a victim that takes place on the internet. It is often known as cyberbullying.

Payment fraud

Online payment fraud is a cybercrime when an individual pays money online (or sells goods or services themselves) to get something in return but receives something of far lesser value or nothing at all. It consists of several similar crimes like non-payment, non-delivery, advance fee, and misrepresentation.

Phishing

Phishing is a social-engineering cyberattack when criminals pose as institutions, authoritative figures to lure out people’s credentials, passwords, and financial information via emails, phone calls (vishing), social media, fake websites (and site redirections called pharming) or SMS messages (smishing).

Ransomware attack

Ransomware is malicious software that blocks access to a device, network, or computer system until a ransom is paid.

SIM swap scam

SIM swapping is a scam when a perpetrator activates a victim’s SIM card on another device to hijack their messages, calls, and mobile data.

Spam email

Spamming is a cybercrime of flooding someone’s inbox or phone with unsolicited emails and messages to extract money or personal information from them by unlawful means, fraud, or trickery.

Spoofing

Spoofing is a crime of falsifying contact information (email, phone number, or website) to make it seem legit and then using it to mislead people for personal gain.

Tech support scam

Tech support scams are fraudulent attempts by criminals to extract money from individuals by posing as customer support or service and making them believe they have a serious problem with their device or software.

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