FBI: Reported Cyber Attacks Down but Potential Losses Up in 2022

Cyberattacks and cyber-enabled frauds continue to affect the everyday lives of Americans. According to the FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2022 received 800,944 cyber fraud complaints, which is a 5% decrease from 2021. However, the potential total loss increased from $6.9 billion in 2021 to more than $10.2 billion in 2022.

Specific to the real estate industry, there were 11,727 victims who reported cyber fraud. This is up from 11,578 who were victims in 2021. The reported losses rose from $350.3 million in 2021 to $396.9 million last year.

New Tactic

The FBI reported an increasingly prevalent tactic by BEC bad actors of spoofing legitimate business phone numbers to confirm fraudulent banking details with victims. In one example, the victims reported they called a title company, Realtor, etc., using a known phone number. However, the number had been spoofed. With this increased tactic of spoofed phone numbers, the FBI said this emphasizes the importance of using two-factor or multi-factor authentication as an additional security layer. Procedures should be put in place to verify payments and purchase requests outside of email communication and can include direct phone calls but to a known verified number and not relying on information or phone numbers included in the email communication.

Other best practices include carefully examining the email address, URL and spelling used in any correspondence and not clicking on anything in an unsolicited email or text message asking you to update or verify account information

Reprint from FBI and ALTA best Practice