Blog

Online dating can be a great way to find lasting love – or even your next fling. But reports to the FTC suggest it also creates opportunities for scammers. In the past five years, people have reported losing a staggering $1.3 billion to romance scams, [1] [2] more than any other FTC fraud category. The numbers have skyrocketed in recent years, and 2021 was no exception – reported losses hit a record $547 million for the year. That’s more than six...

Social media is a gold mine for scammers, and in the latest FTC Data Spotlight, we’re digging deeper into this deceptive trend happening across social media platforms. Why do we repeatedly ask people to file reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov to let us know when they spot questionable conduct? Because – among other things – the FTC and law enforcement members of the Consumer Sentinel Network use that information to spot, track, and ultimately...

Social media permeates the lives of many people – we use it to stay in touch, make new friends, shop, and have fun. But reports to the FTC show that social media is also increasingly where scammers go to con us. More than one in four people who reported losing money to fraud in 2021 said it started on social media with an ad, a post, or a message. [1] In fact, the data suggest that social media was far more profitable to scammers in 2021 than any...

Log4j is a ubiquitous piece of software used to record activities in a wide range of systems found in consumer-facing products and services. Recently, a serious vulnerability in the popular Java logging package, Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) was disclosed, posing a severe risk to millions of consumer products to enterprise software and web applications. This vulnerability is being widely exploited by a growing set of attackers. When vulnerabilities are...

Gift cards may be at the top of your holiday gift giving list. But there’s another list that gift cards top , and it’s decidedly less festive. According to the FTC’s latest Consumer Protection Data Spotlight, reports received in the Consumer Sentinel database reveal that gift cards are the #1 payment method of choice for scammers, leading to a reported $148 million stolen from consumers. Is your business taking steps to protect customers from...

Gift cards are an easy way to give. Reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel show they’re also an easy way to take. About one in four people who report losing money to fraud say it happened when a scammer tricked them into giving the numbers on the back of a gift card. 1 Gift cards are far more frequently reported than any other payment method for fraud, 2 and the numbers have reached staggering new highs compared to past years. 3 In the first nine...

As the holidays – and the end of the tax year – draw near, people are likely to approach small business owners with requests for charitable contributions. But scammers are hard at work with their own holiday rush. To protect your business from fraud and to amplify the impact of your donations on the charities that matter to you, these simple steps can help ensure that Giving Tuesday isn’t followed by Regretful Wednesday. A standard list of...

If recent headlines about ransomware attacks on companies have you worried, your concerns are well-founded. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency – you may know them as CISA – issued a Fact Sheet on Rising Ransomware Threat to Operational Technology Assets. The computer criminals who traffic in ransomware try to exploit vulnerabilities in technology and soft spots in human nature...

The Federal Trade Commission is aggressively hiring Technologists to help drive the agency’s work, ensure a vibrant technology marketplace, conduct investigations, and hold companies and people who violate the law accountable. If you’re a technology researcher, engineer, UX designer, content strategist, or product manager and are thinking about joining us in this new approach to our work, you may have some questions about working for the federal...

The FTC has been warning consumers for years about impersonation scams – calls that falsely claim to come from the IRS, the Social Security Administration, or other offices or businesses. The messages try to coerce people into making immediate payments or turning over sensitive personal information. The FTC’s latest Data Spotlight focuses on the rampant rise of Amazon impersonation scams that have already bilked consumers out of millions of...