- More than half of consumers face scam attempts monthly, according to F-Secure
- Many believe they could spot a scam: two-fifths of them ended up falling victim.
- Consumers point to telcos when it comes to protection
New research from F-Secure claims that online scams have reached more than half of consumers, with 56% of people reporting they have encountered such attempts at least once a month in 2025.
The data, cited in the company’s latest Scam Intelligence and Impact Report based on a survey of 10,000 consumers, has revealed that half (52%) of all victims also lose money when they are compromised in an attack.
In fact, the number of victims losing money as a result of scams doubled from the previous year.
Humans versus AI
The news for consumers is mixed, with F-Secure noting that exposure to scams is no longer increasing as quickly as it once did. However, scammers are getting better at monetizing attacks, making the implications potentially worse.
While half the population is affected by scams monthly, data estimates that 40 million Americans were also victims of scams in the past 12 months. Previously, in 2024, Featurespace found that nearly 80 million Americans had lost money to scams in the previous half-decade.
According to the data, attackers are also focusing more on larger payments than low-level phishing attempts. Fake invoice scams, investment fraud, and banking scams have become popular over the past year.
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence is credited with powering many attacks, offering cybercriminals opportunities to target better, spoof more closely, and move faster from concept to attack.
F-Secure also noted that many now turn to AI chatbots for information without verifying the authenticity of the output, making them more vulnerable in an AI-first era. The company observed ChatGPT sharing scammer phone numbers with users when thousands of flights were canceled due to winter storms.
stay safe
Looking ahead, the company is also concerned about an increase in fraudulent stores and that more and more consumers are turning to artificial intelligence for their online purchases.
That’s not even considering that scammers also rely on AI to help them improve the quality of their so-called “bait,” including personalized emails, synthetic voices, and fake images and videos.
Confidence in detecting them remains high: more than two in three (69%) believe they could detect a scam; However, 43% of those people were also victims of scams.
“As AI increasingly influences how decisions are made and how scams are carried out, it is becoming more difficult for people to distinguish what is real from what is not,” wrote president and CEO Timo Laaksonen.
The FTC recently warned that social media as an attack vector is increasingly important to criminals, with money lost increasing eightfold between 2020 and 2025. In 2025, about a third (30%) of all U.S. citizens who lost money in a scam said it started on social media.
Demographically, younger consumers are most likely to face the greatest number of attack attempts, possibly due to their greater online activity, while older generations typically lose the most money if they are successfully attacked.
As for who has the responsibility to protect consumers, 93% agree that it is important for telecommunications providers to offer protection and four-fifths (82%) even say this could influence the provider they choose.
Laaksonen calls for “going beyond traditional protection towards building true resilience and trust across the entire digital experience.”
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