The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is providing this Public Service Announcement (PSA) to warn that threat actors are spoofing the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) government website. A spoofed website is designed to impersonate a legitimate website and may be used for illegal conduct, such as personal information theft and to facilitate monetary scams. Threat actors create spoofed websites often by slightly altering characteristics of legitimate website domains, with the purpose of gathering personally identifiable information entered by a user into the site, including name, home address, phone number, email address, and banking information. For example, spoofed website domains may feature alternate spellings of words or use an alternative top-level domain to impersonate a legitimate website. Members of the public could unknowingly visit spoofed websites while attempting to find FBI IC3's website to submit an IC3 report.
Tips to Protect Yourself
The FBI recommends individuals take the following precautions:
- When navigating to IC3's official website, type www.ic3.gov directly into the address bar located at the top of your Internet browser, rather than using a search engine.
- If using a search engine, avoid any "sponsored" results as these are usually paid imitators looking to deter traffic from the legitimate IC3 website.
- Verify that the URL of the IC3 website ends in [.]gov and is correctly entered as www.ic3.gov.
- Avoid clicking on any link whose URL differs from the legitimate IC3 site to mitigate risk of fraud.
- Never click on links that may include suspicious artifacts or graphics, such as unprofessional or low-quality graphics used to imitate a legitimate website
- Never share sensitive information if you are unsure of the website's legitimacy.
- Report any incidents to the legitimate FBI IC3 website only at www.ic3.gov.
- IC3 will never ask for payment to recover lost funds, nor will IC3 refer someone to a company requesting payment for recovering funds.
- IC3 does not maintain any social media presence.
Report It
The FBI requests potential victims report any interactions with websites or individuals impersonating IC3 to your local FBI Field Office or IC3 at www.ic3.gov.
- Identify information about the person or company that contacted you.
- Note the methods of communication used, including websites, emails, and telephone numbers.
- Financial transaction information such as date, type of payment, amount, account numbers involved, the name and address of the receiving financial institution, and receiving cryptocurrency addresses.
- Description of your interaction with the individual, including how contact was initiated, purpose of the request for money, how you were instructed to make payment, what information you provided, and any other details pertinent to your complaint.
For additional information on similar scams, please see previous Public Service Announcements: