United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has listed South Africa and Nigeria among nations with the highest number of internet crime victims in the world.
In its 2020 Internet Crime Report, the FBI listed South Africa 6th and Nigeria 16th on the list of nations who had most victims.
The FBI reports that $4.2bn was lost to internet crime in the year under review with 791,790 victims recorded. The report also showed that the number of victims in 2020 almost doubled what was recorded in 2019.
Most complaints reported by victims include phishing/vishing/smishing/pharming, non-payment or non-delivery, extortion, personal data breach and identity theft. Phishing had the highest number of victims in the year reported.
Internet crimes like tech support fraud, business email compromise, ransomware, harassment, confidence fraud/romance, government impersonation and many others were also listed as some of the most dominant criminal activities ongoing on the internet.
People aged 60 and above have fallen victim to internet crimes the most and also lost almost $966,062,236 in the process.
United States, Canada, India, Greece and Australia had the highest number of victims by country.
While South Africa had 1754 victims of internet crime in 2020, Nigeria had 443 and they were the only African nations in the top 20. Both nations are Africa’s biggest economies.