Americans are being targeted by digital scams and cyberattacks at a near-universal rate, with 9 in 10 encountering at least one attempt, according to a report released Thursday by Consumer Reports, Aspen Digital and the Global Cyber Alliance.
AI Is Changing The Threat Landscape
“Nine in ten Americans have been targeted by a scam or cyberattack. That’s not a statistic, that’s almost everyone we serve,” said Phil Radford, president and CEO of Consumer Reports. “AI is making fraud faster, cheaper, and more personal, and no one can out-smart that alone.” Radford added that companies need to be held accountable and that governments need real guardrails.
About 17% of Americans in the survey said they had lost money to a digital scam or cyberattack.
The report also found that confidence in personal data privacy has fallen sharply, with just 32% of Americans saying they feel their sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, remains private.
Experts said artificial intelligence (AI) is lowering the barrier for scammers to craft convincing, personalized attacks. “People have stereotypes about who gets scammed, but it is truly everyone now, and AI is just going to accelerate that,” Stacey Higginbotham, a Consumer Reports cybersecurity fellow, told CBS News on Thursday.
Who’s Responsible
Brian Cute, president and CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance, said individual precautions alone “can’t stop the abuse coming from upstream via insecure routing and maliciously registered domain names,” adding that closing those gaps requires industry, government and philanthropy working together.
The report also points to simple, low-tech habits consumers can adopt, including the “Take9” initiative, which encourages people to pause for nine seconds before clicking, downloading or sharing a link. The report additionally calls for government action, pointing to proposed measures like the bipartisan SCAM Act that would hold social media platforms more accountable for scams on their sites.
Konstanze Frischen, acting executive director of Aspen Digital, said “the status quo on frauds and scams prevention is clearly broken,” and called for solutions spanning industry, government and civil society.
The findings echo warnings elsewhere about AI’s role in enabling fraud and data misuse. Anthropic recently disclosed that its Claude models had been misused in surveillance and fraud operations, including a network of fake dating apps designed to defraud users.
Separately, a federal watchdog has warned that retirement-plan providers may share or sell participants’ personal data — including Social Security numbers, birth dates, and account balances — often without clear consent rules in place.
Disclaimer: This content was produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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