The FTC says Americans lost $10B+ to scammers in 2023, up 14% YoY, with 2.6M+ consumers filing fraud reports; email was the most commonly used method in scams
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer :
Context & Ripple Effects
The FTC’s annual tally extends a pattern already visible in its prior reporting: social media accounted for a substantial share of reported fraud losses in 2021, and [[a:844949|one in four fraud victims reporting losses between 2021 and mid-2023 said the contact began on social media]]. The new data broadens the picture by identifying email as the most commonly used scam channel.
The scale is also consistent with the FBI’s earlier report of $10.3 billion in 2022 online-scam losses, though the agencies’ reporting frameworks and totals should not be treated as interchangeable. Together, the reports show fraud reaching consumers through multiple mainstream digital channels.
First-order effects
- Consumers and the FTC gain a clearer signal that reported scam losses continued to rise in 2023, with more than 2.6 million fraud reports logged.
- Email becomes the most prominent delivery channel in the FTC’s account, putting greater immediate attention on email-based impersonation, phishing, and other fraud prevention.
Second-order effects
- Email providers, security vendors, and organizations that rely on customer email face stronger pressure to improve authentication, filtering, warning systems, and user-facing verification practices.
- Scammers’ use of both email and social platforms means defensive efforts cannot focus on a single channel; abuse can shift among the services consumers use most.
Third-order effects
- If losses keep rising across major communications channels, online fraud prevention is likely to become a more central product, trust, and policy issue rather than a standalone cybersecurity concern.
- The divergence in reported totals across government datasets may increase demand for clearer measurement of fraud types and channels, helping policymakers and platforms target interventions more precisely.
The trend: Digital fraud is becoming a cross-platform consumer-harm problem, with criminals exploiting the everyday channels used for communication and commerce.