Ahead of Cybersecurity Awareness Month this October, there's no better time to focus on your risk of falling victim to a scam.

In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission logged a record $15.9 billion in fraud losses from 3 million fraud reports. When thinking about a scam, you might picture an older adult getting tricked out of their retirement fund, but the harsh truth is that anyone can fall victim to a hoax.

It is true that older victims lose more per incident, as FTC data shows, but younger adults actually file reports for loss due to fraud more frequently. Age isn't a predictor of whether you'll get scammed, but the kind of scam you might face often depends on your age. Spokeo has put together a list of the different kinds of scams that are most prevalent today, leveraging fraud data from the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network and its general data banks.

What the matrix measures

No two scams are exactly the same. The matrix below breaks down the most common scams faced by each age group, calculated based on the FTC Consumer Sentinel Network 2024 fraud reports:

Spokeo

The data used to calculate the percentages is the share of fraud reports per category where the person claimed they actually lost money. It can be treated like a proxy for the success of a scam. Younger age groups report losing money at a remarkably higher rate than their older counterparts. For instance, adults aged 20-29 lost money in 79% of cases involving online shopping scams and 83% of investment-related scams.

Those rates decline with age. People aged 60-69 lost money in only 70% and 76% of the same cases, and those even older, aged 70-79, lost money in only 64% and 72% of cases.

This trend flips when the type of scam specifically targets older adults, such as lottery or government impersonation tactics.

Additionally, as people age, the midpoint dollar amount reported lost rises sharply. Based on the FTC's 2024-2025 Protecting Older Consumers data, those 80 and older reported a median loss above $1,600, the highest of any age group and well above what the average young adult loses in a single incident. Younger pe

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