FBI Warns of Spoofed IC3 Website

The article reports that the FBI warns of threat actors spoofing the official Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) government website, a hub for reporting cybercrime-related activity such as online extortion and ransomware. Spoofed IC3 sites are created to harvest personal information and facilitate monetary fraud, often by slight changes to domains or top-level domains to mislead users.

Users can access the legitimate IC3 site by typing www.ic3[.]gov into their browser, and should avoid sponsored results or any URLs that differ from the real domain. The FBI notes that IC3 will never ask for payment to recover funds and does not maintain social media accounts, emphasising the importance of verifying the site’s authenticity before sharing sensitive details.

Written by Ionut Arghire and published on 22 September 2025, the article highlights that spoofing sites are used to gather names, addresses, phone numbers, emails and banking information. According to FBI, users should also be cautious with links and ensure the site ends in .gov.