Malwarebytes
Reports
All Statistics
Half of the general population have experienced an AI-related scam in the past year.
Half of all IRS scams come by phone call.
MrBeast appears in roughly 30% of impersonation scams tracked by Malwarebytes.
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.
19% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland have turned off voicemail recordings to prevent voice cloning.
One in ten adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland have had explicit AI images made of them without consent.
81% of parents in the surveyed countries fear their child's likeness will be stolen.
88% of people do not freely share personal information with AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini.
25% of people use a personal data removal service, up from 23%.
84% of people have not shared personal health information with AI tools.
Adware levels nearly doubled from the December to May period to the June to November timeframe in 2025, with a 27% increase observed from August through November.
Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUP) detections increased by nearly 75% in the June to November 2025 period compared to the December to May period.
MobiDash (a particularly aggressive adware) detections increased by 77% from September through November 2025.
45% of people have been targeted by Adware.
10% of consumers have been victims of marketplace scams.
20% of people have fallen victim to Adware.
63% of extortion targets experience scam attempts daily.
19% of extortion victims experienced consequences at work or school.
53% of extortion victims are non-white.
55% of iPhone owners expressed trust in their phone's built-in security to keep them safe. This figure is slightly higher than for Android owners, where 50% reported trusting their phone's security
Only 21% of iPhone users reported using security software on their mobile phones. This is less than Android users, where 29% stated they use security software.
53% of iPhone users have fallen victim to a scam. This compares to 48% of Android users who have fallen victim to a scam.
Gen X encountered extortion scams at 35% and fell victim at 15%.
Two-thirds of people are worried about the future of AI and how realistic scams are going to become.
Only 17% of scam victims report scams to authorities.
45% said they "stopped using X" (formerly Twitter).
72% of people are worried their data is being misused by the government.
89% of people "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that they are "concerned about my personal data being used inappropriately by corporations".
Roblox experienced a 15% spike in scam activity from mid-June to mid-July.
Steam experienced a 19% spike in scam activity from mid-June to mid-July.
By Friday, people receive roughly 50% more fraudulent text messages than at the start of the week.
Seventy percent of young adults ages 18 to 22 have experienced an AI-related scam in the past year.
Roughly six in ten romance scams play out on social media.
Nine in ten toll scams arrive by email or text.
Google's name appears in scam content at least twice as often as Amazon's name.
Scam text volume peaks at 12 p.m. ET, approximately 874% higher than at 1 a.m. ET.
17% of the general population have been a victim of an extortion scam.
19% of young adults have been a victim of a deepfake or virtual kidnapping scam.
8% of the general population have been a victim of a deepfake or virtual kidnapping scam.
7% of the general population have been a victim of sextortion.
14% of young adults have been a victim of an impersonation scam.
10% of the general population have been a victim of an impersonation scam.
12% of young adults have been a victim of a romance scam.
10% of the general population have been a victim of a romance scam.
8% of young adults have been a victim of sextortion.
19% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland have experienced AI-driven identity harm, rising to 30% among Gen Z.
13% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland have created a family codeword to guard against likeness theft.
One in three daily AI users in the surveyed countries say it is okay to generate explicit images of someone without their consent.