5 riskiest places to get scammed online

Malwarebytes’ survey of 1,300 adults in the US, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland finds widespread exposure to smartphone scams, with 78% encountering scams weekly and 44% daily, primarily via email, phone/voicemail, SMS, malicious websites, and social media. Social engineering dominates (74% encountered; 36% victimized), including phishing/smishing/vishing, delivery, impersonation, marketplace, and romance scams, while extortion-related threats (including sextortion, virtual kidnapping, and deepfakes) affected 17%. The report maps victim contact channels—e.g., postal scams via SMS, deepfakes via social and email, sextortion via email—emphasizing that scams adapt across platforms and promoting Malwarebytes Scam Guard as a mitigation aid.