Study Finds AI Is Fueling An Alarming Surge In Sophisticated Phishing Scams

The National Consumers League has released its annual fraud report detailing the many scams that most consumers have fallen for. As you'd expect, AI is playing a large role in how the threat landscape has evolved this past year. While the kinds of scams fraudsters are using haven’t changed much, the effectiveness of certain types of scams and the people who fall victim to them have notably shifted.

Phishing and spoofing remain the top choice for criminals, accounting for nearly 35% of all scams reported. However, this type of scam saw an increase of nearly 90% compared to last year. This big jump is due to the rise of AI, which enables attackers to “generate more convincing emails, texts, and cloned voices, making fraudulent messages harder for consumers to detect and easier for criminals to scale.”

When criminals combine phishing with financial or investment scams it can be ...