- Surfshark study puts total losses recorded by deepfake fraud at $3.7 billion
- Social networks are the main source of losses and represent 47% of losses.
- Only 2025 and 2026 are responsible for 89% of the damages
Deepfakes have gone from being an Internet curiosity to becoming a serious financial threat.
New research from Surfshark finds that people have lost at least $3.7 billion to deepfake scams, and the pace of that damage is accelerating dramatically.
The study also tracked where these scams tend to start, with one channel standing out above all the others. Social networks are the main point of origin and represent 47% of all recorded losses.
Running the best VPN will encrypt your traffic and hide your IP address, but it can’t stop a convincing fake video of a celebrity or a cloned voice on your phone from convincing you not to spend your savings.
The magnitude of the problem has changed almost overnight.
According to Surfshark data, losses amounted to just $83 million between 2020 and 2023, then rose to $335 million in 2024, rose to $2.5 billion in 2025, and had already reached $764 million in the first half of 2026. Together, 2025 and 2026 account for 89% of all recorded losses.
Most of these losses come from criminals using deepfakes of celebrities and public figures to push fraudulent investment schemes on social media.
“A single deepfake video can go viral in hours and reach millions of potential victims before being detected or deleted. No other channel offers that type of reach at zero cost,” explains Luís Costa, head of research at Surfshark.
However, not all viral fakes cause harm. Costa points out that an innocent deepfake of a footballer during the World Cup could rack up millions of views without costing anyone a cent, while a fake government post promoting a dubious investment scheme can extract thousands of dollars from a single victim.
The threat is spreading beyond your feed
Social media is only part of the picture. Phishing fraud, in which criminals use deepfakes to impersonate real people or bypass identity checks, is the second largest category with $911 million, or 25% of losses.
Fake job candidate schemes, in which AI-generated interviews are used to infiltrate hiring processes, added another $100 million. These scams are expected to increase as well. As TechRadar previously reported, a 39% increase in “deepfake-as-a-service” conversations on the dark web could end up fueling the next wave of “fake boss” scams.
Everyday communication channels are also increasingly in the line of fire, contributing $174 million among them: phone calls ($71 million), video platforms ($62 million) and messaging apps ($41 million).
The FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report also recorded $893 million in AI-related losses by 2025, with AI-assisted investment fraud alone accounting for $632 million.
A separate Surfshark experiment found that almost half of people cannot reliably distinguish a bot from a human online.
How to stay safe
As Costa says, “conscience is the only effective defense when a familiar voice or face can no longer be implicitly trusted.”
For personal calls and messages, she suggests establishing a family “safe word” that you can use with loved ones to confirm identity when a request seems urgent or out of place.
In video calls, a “fail-safe” can also be useful. Ask the other person to wave a hand in front of your face, as deepfakes often blur or distort when facial features are obscured.
TechRadar has more tips on how to capture compelling AI images and deepfakes if you want to sharpen your eyesight.
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