People assume that most scams happen with boomers or people with minimum internet usage. But the interesting thing is that most scams happen with the generation which is the most online and knows about these scams, i.e., Gen-Z. According to a new report from the Better Business Bureau, Gen-Z loses the most money to scams. The report states that people between the ages of 18 and 24 lost the highest median dollars this year as well as the year before.
The report says that the most loss happened due to scams on employment, online purchases and cryptocurrency investments. On average, Gen-Z lost $155 this year to these scams.The director of BBB, Katie Galan, says that as Gen-Z are the generation most comfortable on internet and tech devices, they are the target for most scammers. Scammers take advantage of the fact that Gen-Z is online and formulate ways to trap them in a way that is not susceptible.
Even though BBB didn’t collect data about people below 18, the report says that children are also becoming the target of these scams. 20% of the respondents who were surveyed had children between the ages of 7 and 18. Out of them, 16% said that scammers have targeted their children too. In 2022, 11% scammers targeted scammers but now the percentage has increased.
Adults, between the ages of 55 and 64, lost the least amount of dollars this year to scammers with $91 amount lost on average. There were also some romance scams reported which got the most amount of money. People above 65 were more prone to romance scams, and lost $3600 on average in 2023. In 2022, the amount lost due to romance scams was $1411 average. Because of this, the romance scam went to fifth spot from seventh spot in the BBB’s list of biggest scams.
In the last year, money lost due to romance scams have risen to 300% as the scammers are now introducing victims to cryptocurrency too. The company that is most impersonated by scammers in The US Postal Service, while Amazon fell to the second spot. Other companies that are impersonated by the scammers are Geek Squad, PayPal, Norton, Facebook, Walmart and Microsoft.
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