New data from the Federal Trade Commission shows that scams originating on social media have accounted for $2.7 billion in reported losses since 2021, more than any other contact method. The FTC says that the most frequently reported scams on social media are related to online shopping, with 44 percent of reports pointing to fraud related to buying or selling products online. Most of these reports come from people who never received the items they ordered after responding to an ad on Facebook or Instagram.
The FTC notes that, although online shopping scams are the most commonly reported scam on social media, scams using social media to promote bogus investment schemes account for larger overall losses, accounting for 53 percent of all the money reported lost to scams on social media in the first half of the year. Cryptocurrency played a significant role in the investment scams consumers reported; more than half of the reports showed that consumers paid the scammers using cryptocurrency.
FTC’s “Data Spotlight” is available here.
