Online fraud and Internet crimes are on the rise in the US. The Pew Research Center cited data from the FBI, showing that the problem caused a loss of more than $16 billion in 2024. The federal government, banks, and technology companies are ringing the bell to warn everyone about this problem.
A recent survey by Pew of 9,000 adults in the US shows that at least 73% of people have been victims of at least one or more online attacks and scams.
The most common forms of fraud for adults in the US are credit card fraud, online shopping scams, and blackmail attacks a type of malware that prevents you from accessing files or computer systems until you pay a ransom.
About 24% of surveyed people said they have received fraudulent emails, text messages or calls asking them to provide personal information. In addition, according to Pew, an estimated 32% of respondents said they were victims of a scam in the past year.
Many people think that older adults are more susceptible to online scams than young people. However, in 2021, the Federal Trade Commission released figures that people in Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Z, aged 18 to 59, were 34% more likely to report losing money due to fraud than those aged 60 and over.
These generation groups are being scammed by online programs originating from social media advertising, investment scams or fake job opportunities.
According to a Pew survey, about 30% of respondents said online scams caused significant losses to their finances, while 42,2% said they did not lose money or suffered no major losses from scams.
In addition to familiar scams, US cybersecurity experts have warned of new forms of stealing sensitive data through online calendar Google, Outlook, multi-factor authentication applications and HTML attached emails.
To cope with these risks, experts recommend that users can change settings to block updates on Microsoft Outlook, limit the number of invitations on Google calendar, change passwords regularly for authentication applications, be careful when opening any strange emails, especially emails with HTML files...
