FTC says Americans lost $12.5B to scams last year — social media, AI and crypto didn’t help

You don’t get the only voicemail about your car’s extended warranty.

According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), about 2.6 million people submitted reports on fraud in 2021, which lost a total of $ 12.5 billion. The FTC received almost the same number of reports in 2021, it was a big jump from $ 2.5 billion.

The most common way when people were told to lose money were when they were contacted via social media, though no FTC platforms did not break the biggest criminal.

When it comes to the scandal themselves, the most common way of the money that people lost was through the Impostor scandal, where bad actors pretend to be romantic interest, distressed family members, government entities or technical assistance experts.

Some of these scandals could get quite extreme – a French woman was Suindled in between $ 800,000 Someone pretended to be a Brad Pitt. However, in less dramatic cases, scammers hunt on people by creating anxiety and urgent feeling, which can even remove the most conscious people from the watch.

Cutter Financial Columnist Charlotte Cowles wrote A viral essay Last year he was scandalized by $ 50,000 in cash, which he handed over to a stranger in the shoebox. Although his essay did not create much compassion from his readers, it showed how skilled criminals could create a crisis that made people quite destabilizing their savings.

Cowless writes, “I am not a person who is under pressure and falls into my door for drug smuggling, money laundering and CIA officers fall for conspiracy,” Cowless wrote. “As long as I was suddenly I was.”

Cowles are fine, though, the victims of the scandal will not always expect you. Veteran people who are less familiar with technology are often considered to be especially risky for online scandals, but FTC says people over the age of 70 can often lose money when reporting people over the age of 70.

For more than a decade, some types of scams were popular, other types of scandal are growing rapidly.

The third most common scandal in 2021 was related to jobs and business opportunities, the number of reports increased by almost three times between 2021 and 2021. When the job and employment scandal represents $ 90 million in 2021, people have lost $ 501 million last year.

The most common way to transfer the Traditional Testing Bank was that people lost money in scams, about $ 2 billion, but cryptocurrency payments were not $ 1.4 billion dollars behind.

These hypocrites can reach customers through social media, phone calls, emails or texts. However, as AI Dipfek technology becomes more accessible, we can see more scandal by phone in the future – scammers will be able to duplicate the voices of human loved ones by paving the way for more target attacks. So, when there is suspicion, you may want to call your grandson before trusting the call from an unknown number that is in danger.