The latest report released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shows that Americans will lose more than $2.1 billion due to social media fraud in 2025, an increase of approximately eight times compared with 2020. Nearly 30% of all victims who reported being defrauded to the FTC said the scam first occurred on social media platforms, led by Meta's platforms, with Facebook accounting for the vast majority of cases, followed by WhatsApp and Instagram, with a clear gap.
The report points out that these social media scams can be roughly divided into three major types: investment, shopping and love. Contrary to some stereotypes, all age groups are severely affected by social media scams, except those 80 and older who are more susceptible to phone scams. In terms of investment scams, victims have lost as much as US$1.1 billion. The modus operandi includes selling so-called "investment teaching plans" through advertisements or posts, or pretending to be "friendly financial advisors", or even setting up fake groups full of "successful investors" to lure people to invest money in fictitious projects.
Shopping scams are also common. About 40% of victims have placed an order to buy products they saw in advertisements, including clothing, beauty, car parts and even pet dogs. Related advertisements often direct users to unfamiliar websites and steal consumers' personal and payment information through fake pages. Some of these websites are disguised as online stores selling well-known brand products at very low prices. As for romance fraud, 60% of victims said that the starting point of the scam is on social media: fraudsters will carefully forge a highly matching identity and interests based on the target user's personal information. After gaining trust, they will fabricate various "emergency crises" to induce the other party to transfer money to them.
FTC gave a number of security recommendations in the report to remind the public to be more vigilant. First of all, don’t let people you only know on social media make investment decisions for you, especially when your account is public, you should be more vigilant. Before establishing contact with strangers, it is recommended to restrict others from viewing your updates and contact information through privacy settings to reduce the use of personal information by criminals from the source. In addition, before purchasing goods based on online advertisements, you should first search for the company name and add keywords such as "fraud" and "complaints" to confirm whether it has a large number of negative records.
Security experts also recommend comprehensively improving protection capabilities from the perspective of “defense system”. On the one hand, you can consider subscribing to a high-quality identity theft protection service so that you can receive professional assistance when your personal information is leaked or funds are stolen, and you can speed up the recovery of losses and repair records. On the other hand, reliable anti-virus software and mobile security applications should be installed on computers and mobile phones to guard against malware, phishing websites and other cyber attacks. At the same time, it’s also key to stay on top of the latest fraud techniques and malware activity, identify early warning signs by studying relevant cases, and then share this knowledge with family and friends to help them avoid falling for similar social media scams.