WASHINGTON – Scam attempts have become a routine part of daily life for many Americans, and a new AP-NORC survey finds that roughly 3 in 10 people in the U.S. have personally lost money or had personal information compromised by a scam.
The February poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research underscores the daily vigilance required of U.S. adults as they dodge suspicious calls, delete questionable texts and emails, and try to determine whether an urgent message from a cellphone provider is real or fraudulent.
A separate Gallup survey conducted with the Stop Scams Alliance and shared exclusively with the AP found that in the past year, about 1 in 10 U.S. adults said they or someone in their household had been tricked by a scammer into sending money or granting access to a financial account. Nearly half of those affected said the loss exceeded $500.
The findings point to a widespread sense of vulnerability, with many Americans feeling exposed to scams and uncertain about where to turn afterward. In both surveys, only a small share of victims said they reported the incident to federal authorities or local police. Gallup found that many chose not to report because they doubted it would help them recover their money.
“You’ve got to be pretty sophisticated these days,” said 42-year-old Adam Pratter, who said he has encountered scams on dating apps. In one case, he sent money to someone claiming to be overseas on a military deployment and in need of help buying food. He recognized it as a scam only after the requests for money kept coming.
Pratter said banks and social media platforms should do more to support people who have been defrauded, while adding that he believes the federal government also has a larger role to play.
“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 never seem to stop
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.
Around 30% of US adults say they’ve been scammed personally
The impact of scams is far-reaching. About half, 51%, of U.S. adults know someone personally — such as a friend or family member — who has ever lost money as the result of a scam, the AP-NORC poll found, while about 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they have personally been scammed into giving away money or personal information.
The Gallup survey found that about 1 in 10 U.S. adults said they or a member of their household was scammed out of money in 2025, with 6% saying they had been personally scammed.
About half of people whose household experienced scams last year reported losing between $125 and $2,000, according to Gallup.
About 1 in 10 U.S. adults have been scammed multiple times, Gallup found.
“It’s not easy. They know what they’re doing,” said Towonna Harris, 50. Her son was once contacted by scammers who promised to give him money for tuition if he authorized a nominal credit card charge, which quickly spiraled into a much bigger set of charges.
She’s experienced other kinds of scams on a smaller scale, too. “I ordered some stuff. I never got it,” she said. “I thought it was a legitimate company. And then I saw all these reviews saying it was a scam.”
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 likelier 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.
More broadly, Americans express very low confidence that they’d know how to report a scam to the government if they needed to. According to the AP-NORC poll, most Americans, 55%, say they are “extremely” or “very” confident that if they were scammed, they’d know how to report it to banks or credit card companies, but only about one-quarter are similarly confident that they’d know how to report to federal or state law enforcement.
Only about one-third of U.S. adults said they would know where to make a report if they lost $5,000 in a scam today, Gallup found.
Max Anderson, 23, said that his parents are small business owners who were the victims of a costly and complex scam. “A scammer successfully imitated one of their employees and changed their direct deposit information. This went on for about 3 months. It went to $15,000,” he said.
Eventually, Anderson’s father got help from the FBI, he said.
“I do like that the government stepped in with my parents, and I feel like that’s the way it should be,” he said. “It’s a big enough problem at this point that it falls to the government and companies to do something about it.”
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Associated Press reporters Mary Rajkumar, Juliet Linderman and Erika Kinetz contributed to this report. Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism student Molly Wallace contributed to this report.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,133 adults was conducted Feb. 19-23 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
The Stop Scams Alliance-Gallup poll of 5,173 adults was conducted Jan. 8-Feb. 18 using a sample drawn from Gallup’s probability-based Gallup Panel. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.
