Fraud vs Phishing

70% of young adults ages 18 to 22 experienced an AI-related scam in the past year.

50% of the general population experienced an AI-related scam in the past year.

24% of young adults have been a victim of an extortion scam.

72% of African member countries reported the presence of scam centres.

14% of reported cybercrime cases in Africa in 2025 involved identity theft and financial fraud.

15% of executives are targeted by social media imposter accounts.

36% of restaurants experienced fraudulent refund requests as a form of social engineering in the past year.

30% of restaurants experienced AI-generated voice or video impersonating executives to authorize fraudulent payments in the past year.

Adoption of AI-powered fraud detection grew by 71% year-on-year.

Detected threats increased by 77% as fraudsters use AI to scale and personalize harmful messaging.

44% of security leaders use AI-based solutions for threat detection and fraud prevention.

19% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland have turned off voicemail recordings to prevent voice cloning.

85% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland say it is hard to tell a scam apart from the real thing, up from 66% in 2025.

88% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland say it is becoming harder to tell what online content is genuinely human or real.

Account-problems scams are the highest-volume scam type, with 74% of victims sharing high-value personally identifiable information (PII).

Vishing intrusions increased by 2x in 1H 2026.

17% of reported cybercrime cases in Africa in 2025 involved online scams, including phishing.

Monthly device code phishing attempts increased 15x in 1H 2026.

In the first half of 2026, 67% of phishing emails passed DMARC.

39% of phishing messages featured novel social engineering techniques.

VIP users were targeted in 25.8% of phishing attacks.

The three most vulnerable industries at baseline are Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals (42.7%), Insurance (38.1%), and Retail & Wholesale (36%).

Organizations reduce phishing susceptibility by 79% after one year of consistent security awareness training.

Before any training, roughly one in three employees is likely to engage with a phishing attempt.

Almost 86% of phishing attacks contain AI-generated elements.

The number of mobile devices where employees clicked a malicious link grew 110% in 2025 compared to 2024.

Phishing events detected on employee mobile devices have grown 380% since January 2025.

Phishing was the primary means of gaining initial access in over half of Cisco Talos Incident Response engagements this quarter, up from approximately one-third of engagements last quarter.

The ARToken panel exposed 80+ API endpoints for device code phishing, primary refresh token persistence, email access, BEC operations, and SharePoint exfiltration.

Microsoft was the most impersonated brand in Q2 2026, appearing in 23% of all brand phishing attempts.