Nearly all Americans targeted by a digital scam or cyberattack, studies show

Nine in 10 American consumers have encountered at least one digital scam or cyberattack attempt and 17 percent of Americans have lost money to a scam, 10 percent permanently, 7 percent temporarily, according to the fifth annual Consumer Cyber Readiness Report by Consumer Reports, Aspen Digital, and the Global Cyber Alliance. In some cases, the money was recovered.

Another Consumer Reports survey, also conducted in 2026, revealed a significant crash in consumer confidence on personal data privacy: only 32 percent felt at least somewhat confident that their personal data – such as Social Security number, health history, and financial information – remained private, down from 48 percent when the same question was asked May 2025. The proportion of Americans reporting they were “not confident at all” nearly doubled, from 16 percent to 29 percent.

“Nine in ten Americans have been targeted by a scam or cyberattack,” Phil Radford, president and CEO of Consumer Reports, a testing and advocacy organization, said in a statement. “AI is making fraud faster, cheaper, and more personal, and no one can out-smart that alone.

Radford said companies need to be held accountable and governments need to adopt real guardrails.

Additional key findings from the reports:

• Personalization poses risks: One in five consumers who had encountered any scam attempts reported that the most recent scam attempt they encountered was customized using personal details. This was most common with scams that began by phone calls with a third of people saying it was somehow personalized to them. 
• Ability to recover financial losses: Of the 17 percent of Americans who lost money, 7 percent of them recovered that money thanks to the payment method they used. Of those who paid the scammer with a credit card, 61 percent got their money back, as did 45 percent of those who paid with debit cards.  Only 15 percent of those who paid with peer-to-peer payment services, such as Zelle and Venmo, got their money back, and only 5 percent of those who paid with cryptocurrency recovered it.
• Who should be held accountable: Twenty-nine percent of Americans believe platform owners – social media, messaging, and sales platforms – carry the primary responsibility for stopping digital scams, followed by the federal government at 18 percent; individual consumers at 16 percent; and financial companies at 14 percent. 
• How consumers are staying safe: Consumers are attempting to protect themselves through actions such as inspecting links in texts and emails before clicking, 69 percent; using multi-factor authentication, 60 percent; and turning on automatic software updates, 48 percent, among other things.  

“When nearly every American is being targeted online, the status quo on frauds and scams prevention is clearly broken,” Konstanze Frischen, acting executive director of Aspen Digital, a think tank on the digital age, said. “This year’s report shows that consumers are fighting back, but they shouldn’t have to fight alone. We need solutions that span across industry, civil society, philanthropy, and government to stop these attacks from continuing to hurt communities across the country.”

Frischen points to Take9, an initiative that encourages consumers to pause and take 9 seconds before you click, download and share.

The three groups also recommend that businesses should enable tools such as multi-factor authentication and encourage its use along with good password hygiene. In addition, they say social media platforms should do more to hold scammers accountable on their platforms, while also making it easier for consumers to report scams and reach human beings when they think a scam has occurred. 

As for governments, they need to play a key role by enacting proposed laws such as the SCAM Act or New York’s False Social Media Advertising Prevention Act. These acts would hold social media platforms accountable for turning their sites into a playground for scammers and make it easier for consumers to report fraudulent and scammy activity. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general can investigate and bring enforcement actions against social media platforms under the FTC Act and state laws that already prohibit unfair and deceptive practices.

“Personal precautions alone can’t stop the abuse coming from upstream via insecure routing and maliciously registered domain names,” said Brian Cute, president and CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance, a nonprofit that focuses on Internet safety. “Closing those gaps takes industry, government, and philanthropy working together, and that collaboration is as essential to a safer Internet as any password or security patch.”