When it comes to met online, we often tend to think that the easiest preys are the elderly or people with little computer knowledge. But is it really so?
A research carried out by Social Catfish which examined data ranging from 2017 to 2022, taking into consideration the US context, revealed interesting statistics on this issue to say the least. Apparently, by report age range e number of casespeople aged 20 (or younger) are most affected.
The aforementioned five-year period, in fact, has seen an increase in cases equal to 2.500% among under 20compared to an increase of 805% among elderly people. An important figure, which however is overturned if analyzed from another point of view.
If we consider the scope of online scams from an economic point of view, in fact, the elderly are much more vulnerable. In fact, in 2022 alone, senior users registered losses of $3.1 billion respect to 210 million of young people in the same year.
Online scams? An increasing trend, but the money recovered remains a small part
Collectively, online scams cost people a record $10.3 billion in 2022, up from $6.9 billion a year earlier. The victims have lost nearly $13,000 on average (about 12,000 euros), according to the study, but in reality all the numbers may not be entirely accurate: some 5,500 casualties interviewed for the study, 4.455 they didn’t report what happened out of shame.
According to the study, only the 4,2% of the stolen money was recovered, mainly thanks to the work of theFBI. This low percentage is not surprising: in many cases, in fact, online scams originate from other countries where the American law enforcement agencies cannot intervene.
Beyond this shower of numbers, it is easy to ask a question: why are young people victimized more often? According to some, it could be attributable to the use ofIA. According to Social Catfish, in this context, operations such as voice cloning and notorious deep fake would be the prime suspects.