Cybercrime
Lock it down. One hour, $0.
The cybercrime that reaches a household is rarely a hacker who picked you. It’s a scam sent to everyone, or a password leaked from someone else’s breach. Americans reported a record $20.9 billion in losses to the FBI in 2025.1 Pick a door.
Learn
What’s true
What the crimes actually are, who loses most, why “trillions” is a projection, and what the state-level attacks mean for you (mostly nothing).
10 minutes
Do
The whole thing
Passkeys on your email, the call-back rule that touches where most of the money goes, your phone number locked and your credit frozen. Then backups, updates and one older relative.
1 hour · $0
Practice
Keep it going
Seven messages: scam or not? A quarterly rhythm, and the list that tracks which doors you’ve closed.
A drill · quarterly check
If you only have
- Two minutes: agree a family safe word. A cloned voice can’t know it.
- Fifteen minutes: a passkey or two-step sign-in on your email. Whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
- An hour: the whole list, in order. Print it or tick it here.
Where this started: Averting the unspoken threat of cybercrime, an essay from 2025. These pages are built from the sources, not the essay; its page lists what has changed since it was written.
Contest a fact, suggest something, or tell us what’s broken
If someone is in danger right now, don’t use this form. Call your local emergency number (911 in the US). For trafficking: 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733.
No name, no account. Your note goes into the site’s private records, nothing about your browser or connection is stored with it, and the email box is the only way we’d know who you are. The weekly review reads every note, re-reads the original source, and fixes the page if it should. A contested fact and its outcome are listed on Contested, in the review’s words, never yours.
No tracking on any link.Ticks stay on this device.Facts checked 5–6 Nov 2026.What changedContested