You are not the only one getting a voicemail about your car's extended warranty.
According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), approximately 2.6 million people filed reports on victims of the 2024 fraud, resulting in a total loss of $12.5 billion. This is a big jump from the $2.5 billion lost in 2023 when the FTC received roughly the same number of reports.
The most common way people reported losing money was when they were contacted through social media, but the FTC doesn't break down which platforms are the biggest culprits.
As for fraud, the most common way people lost money was through fraudsters' scams in which bad actors pretend to be romantic interests, painful families, government agencies, or technical assistance experts.
Some of these scams can be pretty extreme. One French woman was reportedly stolen out of $800,000 by someone pretending to be actor Brad Pitt. But if it's not that dramatic, con artists prey on people by creating a sense of anxiety and urgentness.
Cut financial columnist Charlotte Cowles wrote a viral essay last year on how she was scamned from the $50,000 cash she handed over to strangers in her shoebox. Her essay didn't give much sympathy from the reader, but it showed that skilled criminals were creating a precarious crisis enough to focus on savings.
“I'm not someone who panics under pressure and falls into conspiracy that involves drug smuggling, money laundering, CIA officers at my door,” Cowles wrote. “All of a sudden, I was.”
But Cowles is right, but the victims of fraud aren't necessarily the people you expect. While older people who are less tech-savvy are often considered particularly vulnerable to online scams, the FTC says people aged 20-29 often lose money when reporting fraud than people over the age of 70.
While some types of scams have been popular for over a decade, other types of scams are rising rapidly.
The third most common scam of 2024 was related to jobs and business opportunities, where the number of reports has almost tripled between 2020 and 2024. Employment and employment fraud represented a loss of $90 million in 2020, but last year they reported a loss of $505 million.
Traditional bank transfers were the most common way people lost money to fraud and lost about $2 billion in total, but cryptocurrency payments were not $1.4 billion.
These scammers may reach out to consumers via social media, phone, email, or text. However, as AI's deep-fark technology becomes more accessible, more scams may occur over telephones in the future. Scammers can more closely mimic the voices of loved ones of those who pave the way for more targeted attacks. So, when you're in doubt, you might want to call your grandson before you believe calls from unknown numbers that he's in danger.