Texting Scam Attempts Increased 50 Percent This Year

Thirty percent of Americans who encountered a digital scam in the past year said it started with a text or messaging app, up from 20 percent the year before, according to the 2025 Cyber Readiness Report, an annual assessment from Consumer Reports, Aspen Digital, and the Global Cyber Alliance.

One in five of those who said they personally encountered a scam or cyberattack in the past year said they lost money to the scam—about the same as last year. But that amounts to approximately one in 10 Americans.

Gen Z (18- to 29-year-olds) were particularly affected; 40 percent of this group who reported a cyberattack or scam attempt said it began via text. Last year it was only 13 percent.

“Gen Z is falling victim to record levels of text scams due to three colliding trends,” Jason Dorsey, president and lead Gen Z researcher at the Center for Generational Kinetics, said in the report. “First, texting is their primary communication channel, with hundreds of daily messages creating a perfect opening for scammers. Second, they tend to be in large group messaging threads with unknown contacts, making it easy to mistake a scammer’s number for a friend’s number. Third, they have less experience spotting scams but instant access to money on their phones, reducing friction for scams to succeed. For many, especially with small-dollar scams, the experience has become so common that it feels almost normal!”

Text scams have affected all age groups, though. Older groups saw increases of 7 or 8 percentage points.

While the initial outreach methods have changed, the scam methods remain stable, the report found. Phishing is still the most common type of scam or attack, cited by 39 percent of victims surveyed. In this group, one in four said that scammers pretended to be their bank or tech support.

Black Americans were more likely to lose money in digital scams than white Americans (37 percent vs. 15 percent, respectively), the report found. Other research has found that people living in communities of color in the United States filed a higher percentage of reports that included payments using debit cards, cash, cryptocurrency, and money orders—all of which provide fewer fraud protections than credit cards, which were more used by white Americans.

Because of their lower fraud protections, digital payment apps like CashApp, Venmo, or Zelle should only be used to pay family, friends, or people you trust, the report said.

Scams centered around student loan forgiveness, false business opportunities, and pyramid schemes also disproportionately affected Black and Latino communities.

Lower income households also had a higher likelihood of losing money due to digital scams. Nearly 30 percent of those earning less than $30,000 a year lost money to a cyberattack or digital scam in the past year, compared to 10 percent of those earning $100,000 or more.

Source: ASIS Online

Image: Freepik