Social media is a scammer’s playground, FTC report says | #ukscams | #datingscams | #european

More than 95,000 people lost a collective $770 million due to fraud on social media last year, a new FTC report found. That represents 25% of all reported losses to fraud in 2021 and a breathtaking 18x increase over social media scam losses in 2017.

Driving the surge, you will be unsurprised to hear, are scams promoting bogus cryptocurrencies (like that Squid Game crypto whose developers made off with $3.4 million).

In fact, investment-related scams were the most prevalent type of fraud on social media, accounting for 37% of all losses. Romance scams (24%) were No. 2, and online shopping scams (14%) won the bronze medal.

• For all you youngsters who want to pin this on tech-illiterate boomers, think again: People ages 18–39 were more than twice as likely as older adults to lose money from a social media scam, the FTC said.
• Another crazy stat: Of the scammed people who identified a social media platform associated with undelivered goods, nearly 9 out of 10 named Facebook or Instagram.

Bottom line: Social media is a “gold mine” for fraudsters because of the ease of developing a fake persona and the ability to use platforms’ advertising tools to target a specific audience, per the FTC.