Studies Show That Millennials Are Most Vulnerable to Scams

Who’s most likely to be a victim of online and phone fraud? It’s not who you think. Surprisingly, despite having grown up as digital natives, millennials are the most vulnerable targets.

The general assumption is that elderly people are the primary target of phone scams. Adults ages 55 and up are increasingly at risk of getting unwanted calls from “charity” phone solicitors, phony IRS agents, sweepstakes and lottery fraudsters, among others. But recent studies peg millennials—people between the ages of 18 and 34—as the most vulnerable to losing money from a phone scam.

A new study from mobile communications company Truecaller found that among millennials, 17 percent of women and a whopping 38 percent of men said they’d been victimized. That compares to 11 percent of all Americans who lost money in a phone scam in the previous 12 months.

Furthermore, while scammers previously targeted landlines, 74 percent of scams occurred on mobile phones, an increase of more than 50 percent compared to the previous year. One reason for this rise is that many consumers are dropping their landlines.

Americans, in total, receive about 16 spam calls on their cell phone or landline and six spam texts each month, Truecaller estimates. In June the Federal Communications Commission strengthened protections against debt collectors calling a cellphone to dun late-paying loan holders. But a Congressional budget bill passed in November contravened the FCC’s ruling—so new scams will likely take advantage of this.

Security Slackers

Millennials aren't much safer online.

Norton, which provides computer security software, surveyed more than 17,000 adults in 17 countries in its 2016 Cybersecurity Insights Report. The survey found that 44 percent of U.S. millennials have been a victim of online crime in the past year, compared to just 16 percent of baby boomers. The survey also indicated that they may be lax when it comes to security: 38 percent of millennials believe they “aren’t interesting enough” to be a target of online crime, even though 63 percent have been victims.

Despite being the generation most concerned with cyber-security, a TransUnion survey found that millennials are the least likely to actively protect their data and they lack a clear understanding of how certain behaviors put them at risk for fraud. The vast majority of millennials store bank account information on their phones, check financial accounts while connected to public Wi-Fi, and don’t use passwords to protect their mobile devices.

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