People lost an estimated $442 billion to scams last year worldwide,
according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.
The scale of that is hard to picture, but people’s day-to-day scam experience is easier to recognize: Our
research found that
44% of people say they encounter mobile scams every single day. Two in three say it’s hard to “tell apart a scam from the real thing” and only 15% strongly agree they could detect a scam.
A year ago, we said we were stepping away from April Fools’ Day. Not because we don’t like a joke, but because the jokes were starting to look too similar to the things people are already worried about.
A few people may have called us humorless. But a year on, we’re more certain than ever that it was the right call. We want to explain why, with a bit more data behind us this time.
It’s gotten worse, not better
When we wrote last year’s post, AI-assisted scams were an emerging threat. Now they’re the default. The broken English and obvious spelling mistakes that used to give scams away have been replaced by clean copy, polished websites, and messages that read as well as anything a real company would send.
Scammers’ tactics have also evolved. A year ago, the
main AI scam story was voice cloning (fraudsters using an AI replica of a loved one’s voice to call a family member and claim they were in trouble). That’s still happening, but now we’re also seeing
deepfake video calls from people posing as bank managers or job applicants, and
AI-assisted scams that don’t just send a message, but reply in real time, adapting their responses and guiding victims step by step.
Put a well-executed April Fools’ campaign next to a modern phishing attempt and many of us will genuinely need to look twice
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