New national surveys reveal that scam calls, fake text messages, social media fraud and phishing attacks are becoming part of everyday life, yet most victims never report the crime.
Most Americans are inundated with scam attempts on a daily basis — and about 3 in 10 have personally lost money or personal information to scams, according to a new AP-NORC survey.
The poll, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in February, highlights the obstacle course that U.S. Adults navigate daily as they screen calls, ignore messages or try to puzzle out if that urgent request from their cellphone provider is legitimate.
A separate survey conducted by Gallup and the Stop Scams Alliance that was provided exclusively to the AP found that last year alone, about 1 in 10 U.S. Adults said they or someone else from their household was deceived by a scammer into losing money or providing access to a financial account, with nearly half saying they lost more than $500.
That leaves many Americans feeling like they’re constantly at risk of falling for a scam, often without a sense of recourse. In both surveys, few victims said they reported the scam to the federal government or local law enforcement. Many victims didn’t report the scam, Gallup found, because they didn’t think it would make a difference in getting money back.
“You’ve got to be pretty sophisticated these days,” said Adam Pratter, 42. He has run into problems on dating apps — and once ended up sending money to a person who claimed they were overseas because of a military deployment and needed money to buy food. I realized it was a scam when the requests didn’t stop.
Pratter thinks banks and social media companies have a responsibility to help people who have been scammed, but also believes the government needs to do more.
“If federal regulation wanted to step in and make deals with these companies to get these people their money back, they could,” he said.
For many Americans, scam attempts are constant
Americans are flooded with scam attempts, according to both surveys. More than half, 58%, of U.S. adults in the AP-NORC poll said they receive daily text messages, phone calls, emails, online messages or online advertisements that they suspect are scams, while the Gallup survey found last year that about 4 in 10 experienced attempted scams on a daily basis.
Porschel Smith, 22, gets multiple scam calls every day, and receives even more scam emails. Some of the scams are easy for her to identify. “They mention different types of programs that I know are nonexistent,” she said.
But sometimes she ends up engaging with the scammer before realizing that something is wrong.
“Some of them hack your account and pretend as if they’re someone that you know,” she said. “But then I get to asking questions and realize they’re scams.”
Older people are more likely to say they receive scam attempts daily, according to the AP-NORC poll. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults ages 60 and older say they are contacted by a suspected scammer at least once a day, compared to about 4 in 10 Americans under 30.
Among those who have received suspected scam attempts, the AP-NORC poll found that outreach involving package shipments or banking were among the most common methods. About 4 in 10 people who were contacted by scammers say at least one of the attempts they received over the past few years were through Facebook or Facebook Messenger, while about 2 in 10 said they were on WhatsApp, and a similar share said they were on Instagram.
Few scam victims report to law enforcement
Virtually all U.S. Adults believe that scams pose a “major” or “minor” threat to individuals in the U.S., but few think the government is doing enough to solve the problem. About 8 in 10 Americans say the government is “definitely” or “probably” doing too little to prevent scams, according to the Gallup survey, including large majorities of Republicans and Democrats.
When people are scammed, both surveys found that victims are much more likely to reach out to financial institutions than the federal government or local law enforcement. About half, 55%, of people who were scammed last year reported to a bank, credit union or other financial institution, the Gallup poll found, but only 18% contacted state or local law enforcement, while 13% reported to either federal law enforcement or the Federal Trade Commission.
Many victims don’t make a report because they don’t think it will help, or don’t know where to go, Gallup found. Among people who were scammed in 2025, 75% said they didn’t report because they thought it wouldn’t make a difference in getting their money back, while 58% were uncertain where to report.
