Scams that start on a social media feed account for a large slice of what American consumers say they lost. The Federal Trade Commission reports that nearly 30% of consumers who reported losing money to scammers in 2025 said they were first contacted on social media platforms. The figure appears in a September 24 notice in which the agency asks the public whether its rule on impersonation scams should be widened to cover the platforms that carry the ads.
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What the FTC counted in its 2025 loss reports
The statistic describes where contact began, not how many people were scammed. It covers consumers who filed money-loss reports for 2025, and the share who named a social media platform as the first point of contact came to nearly 30%. People who never reported are outside the count, and so are people whose first contact was a call, text or email.
The FTC’s press release on the rulemaking notice attaches dollar totals to the picture. Reported losses to imposter scams in 2025 reached $3.5 billion, and losses in which social media was involved came to $2.1 billion. Both are totals of losses that consumers reported to the agency. The release counts more than 1 million imposter-scam reports for 2025, drawn from the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel data.
An advance notice, not a new rule
What the FTC announced is an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, the earliest step in changing a federal rule. The rule under review is the Trade Regulation Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses. Nothing in it has changed yet. The Commission voted 2-0 to submit the notice for publication.
The rule being reviewed is not new. The FTC’s rule page records that it went into effect on April 1, 2024, and that its first enforcement case, announced on June 28, 2024, targeted a student loan debt relief scheme. The notice asks whether to amend that rule, write a new one or rely on non-regulatory measures, and raises steps such as vetting advertisers, monitoring ads, investigating suspected impersonation ads, removing confirmed scam ads and pursuing disciplinary action.
The question put to the public is specific. The agency seeks comment on “the extent to which ad-optimization tools and services offered by social media, search engines and other digital marketplace platforms further efforts by scammers to impersonate legitimate businesses and government agencies using online ads.” In plain terms, regulators want evidence on whether the tools that help advertisers find the right audience also help fake advertisers find victims.
The comment period runs 60 days from publication of the notice in the Federal Register. The release did not give a Federal Register date, so the closing day cannot be stated yet. Comments are posted publicly once received.
How a household or advocate can weigh in
Public comments are submitted through the Federal Register notice and are posted to Regulations.gov. Because the notice asks an open question rather than proposing text, comments that describe a specific experience, such as how a fake ad looked, which platform carried it and how much was lost, are the kind of evidence the question invites. Consumer groups, platforms and ad-industry trade bodies can each answer the same question from different directions, and the Commission is not bound by the outcome of the comments.
What the agency says is at stake for households
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the release: “Free markets depend on trust, transparency and consumers’ ability to make informed choices.” He added that impersonation scams, “especially when amplified by digital platforms that profit from them,” do more than take hard-earned money from Americans. He also said consumers reported nearly $3.5 billion in impersonation-fraud losses last year and that “the true cost is likely far higher.”
That framing shifts some attention from the scammer to the platform. If the agency eventually proposes language that reaches platform advertising tools, the effect would come through a later stage with its own notice and comment cycle, none of which has started.
Where the money goes once a social media contact turns into a payment
The FTC’s recent enforcement actions show the payment end of these schemes. In September the agency announced a proposed order against payment processor Humboldt Merchant Services, with $12 million in consumer redress. The agency says Humboldt opened and processed payments for more than 1,000 sham merchant accounts used by shell companies fronting fraud, with chargebacks roughly 10 times industry standards. The order, filed in federal court in Michigan, needs a judge’s approval to become final.
A second case involved Nuvei, which agreed to pay $4.85 million for consumer redress. According to the FTC, Nuvei processed more than $30 million in consumer payments for Reimage, an offshore tech-support scam, from 2017 to 2023, and also handled payments tied to a tax-authority impersonation. The case was brought in the District of Arizona.
Neither case is part of the rulemaking, and neither order is described in the releases as a scam wave happening now; they are completed or pending actions about past conduct.
The 2025 loss reports, the $3.5 billion total and the 2-0 vote all trace to the FTC’s own release of September 24, 2026, which remains the controlling document until the notice appears in the Federal Register and the comment clock starts.
Personal details that sit on data-broker lists
Social media is one route by which a scam can begin, and unwanted calls, texts and emails are others. Incogni asks data brokers and people-search sites to remove personal information, sends those removal requests on a customer’s behalf and keeps re-sending them. Less personal data on broker lists can mean fewer scam calls, texts and emails, and the status of each request shows in the customer’s account.
See how Incogni sends removal requests to data brokers →
This report was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the FTC releases it cites.
