The Size of the Scam Problem

The scale of phone scams has been setting new record highs each year, affecting millions of people and causing billions in losses. Let's break down the numbers to understand the true magnitude of this challenge. Other posts talk about the hidden costs of scams, so here we will focus on the financial impact.

United States Impact

The Growth Trajectory

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been tracking the growth of scams for years. The following chart shows the quarterly trend of total financial losses to scams over the past few years:

Not all the data is available for 2024 yet, but we expect the losses to continue to grow. While VeriTalk is focused on preventing phone scams, it is worth noting that the data above is describing fraud losses from all contact methods.

Financial Losses

• Over $10 billion lost to consumer fraud in 2023
• 2024 is expected to clock in at $11.5 billion

Contact Methods by Age

One interesting trend we've observed is how different age groups are targeted through different channels. The chart below shows the percentage of fraud reports by contact method across different age groups:

This data reveals a clear pattern: while younger people are more likely to be targeted through social media, phone scams disproportionately affect older adults. As older adults often have more savings to lose, this matches the data showing phone scams have higher median losses.

Going Global

VeriTalk is founded in the United States, but the problem is global. As a small startup company, we will initially focus on our home country, but we will be expanding to other countries as quickly as possible. We plan to exceed the privacy standards of the GDPR and equivalent regulations in other countries.

This is clearly a growing problem that needs new solutions like the one we are developing. In our next post, we'll explore why this problem has led to a fundamental change in how people interact with their phones.