By Elizabeth Montalbano – Cybercriminals are focusing on previously successful internet scams to defraud businesses and individuals in the United States out of more money than ever before, according to the FBI’s annual report on cybercrime. Meanwhile, ransomware continues to take a big financial toll on victims.

Businesses and individuals lost $3.5 billion to cybercriminals last year while reporting more incidents of internet crime to the FBI than any year previously, according to the bureau’s Internet Core Competency Certification (IC3) 2019 Internet Crime Report, which was released on Tuesday.

The results demonstrate that cybercrime is flourishing despite increased awareness of cyber-scams and improved security products. People reported 467,361 complaints of cybercrime to the FBI in 2019—an average of nearly 1,300 incidents every day, and more than 100,000 more than the year prior, according to the report. Read On: