Americans believe that the government and public sector are doing a bad job of reducing online scams and they rank telecoms services among the worst vectors for attacks. That is the conclusion from a major nonpartisan nonprofit survey of a large number of American adults.
The figures about phone services are shocking. 31% of Americans say they get a scam call every day. 68% say they get at least one scam call per week. 20% say they get a scam text message every day. 61% say they get at least one scam text message per week. These figures come from a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, a respected think tank whose work is funded by charitable trusts. The results are not just bad for the US comms sector. They are also inconsistent with claims made by the industry about a supposed reduction in scam activity.
Pew’s survey asked respondents about their experience of online scams and attacks. A representative sample of 9,397 adults completed the survey online or by live telephone conversation between April 14 and April 20. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The margin of error for results is +/-1.3%. Pew transparently publishes the details of their survey methodology. In other words, this survey is big, robust and unbiased.
It is notable that respondents were more likely to say they received scam calls at least once a week (68%) than to say they received scam emails at least once a week (63%). They were more likely to say they received scam text messages at least once a week (61%) than to say they received scam social media messages at least once a week (33%). Dissatisfaction with phone services was obvious from the answers to other survey questions too. 68% of Americans say there is a major problem with online scams and attacks conducted via phone calls and text messages. This was worse than the numbers who said there was a major problem with scams and attacks through any other vector. A further 24% of Americans say scams and attacks by phone calls and text messages are a minor problem, giving a total of 92% of Americans perceiving problems with the scams and attacks that occur via conventional phone services. In other words, phone companies cannot simply shrug their shoulders and pass the buck to other tech businesses. Telcos must do better if they are to regain public trust.
The American public had an understandably negative view of the work being done to stop scams. 68% said the government was doing a bad job of preventing online scams and attacks. The private sector fared only slightly better in their estimation, with 56% saying businesses have done a bad job of preventing online scams and attacks. The opinions of Republicans were slightly more favorable to government and businesses, while Democrats had a slightly more adverse opinion of both, but the differences between them were small. In other words, there is a broad consensus that cuts across political allegiances. The majority of Americans consider both government and the private sector to be doing a bad job of reducing online scams and attacks.
What strikes me about these survey findings is that they are so different to the numbers that have been touted by US government agencies and various US businesses. Entities like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and several suppliers of anti-scam tech have been desperately asserting that automated anti-fraud controls and an alleged ‘crackdown’ on criminals have greatly reduced the number of scam calls and messages received by Americans. For that to be true, the majority of respondents to Pew’s survey must have exaggerated the number of scam calls and messages they receive.
For example, respected call analysis business YouMail has slipped into the habit of asserting that the number of scam robocalls is well down from its peak, even though the overall number of robocalls has continued to trend upwards. Taken at face value, their figures suggest Americans currently receive around 2 scam calls per person per month. But if 31% of Americans receive one scam call every day, and another 37% receive one scam call per week, then the average would be over 11 scam calls per person per month.
It could be argued that YouMail’s figures only cover robocalls, and ignores any scam calls involving a live conversation with a human scammer. Even so, something is badly wrong with at least some of these statistics. YouMail consistently reports over 4 billion robocalls in total per month, which gives an average per person that is much closer to the scam call figures reported by Pew. So one possible explanation of the discrepancy is that YouMail is reporting an accurate estimate of the total number of robocalls, but is underreporting the proportion of those calls made by scammers. An alternative explanation is that YouMail has correctly identified a big rise in legal spam calls but Americans are so angry about these calls that they dismiss them as scams too.
I have always been doubtful of YouMail’s ability to reliably distinguish between scam calls and other calls, despite the eagerness with which their claims have been repeated by others. One reason to be wary is that YouMail did not previously break out figures for scam calls, despite them now saying the historic number of scam calls was higher. It was extraordinarily convenient that they reported a downward trend for the illegal scam calls that government agencies and telcos most needed to reduce, but there has been an equal and opposite rise in legal spam calls that would keep motivating customers to purchase YouMail’s spam-blocking app.
On the other hand, there was also a large drop in the number of complaints about unwanted calls to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) between 2021 and 2022, although complaint figures rose again at the beginning of 2025. Commsrisk will keep monitoring the FTC’s statistics though it is important to be cautious when drawing conclusions from complaints data. The number of complaints can also fall because consumers are fatigued. If you continually received one scam call per day, would you reliably submit one new complaint per day?
The one safe conclusion to draw from the conflicting data is that other nations should ignore unsolicited advice from Americans on how to reduce scam calls and messages. It is very obvious that US businesses with an interest in shaping regulatory policies or selling anti-scam solutions are better at lobbying foreigners than reassuring the American public. Upbeat stories about the success of anti-scam methods adopted in the USA need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Comms providers and their regulators should always be mindful of the importance of public opinion, especially when it comes to the awareness and the fear of scams. Regulators in other countries do not want to fall into the same trap as the FCC, which routinely boasts to the public about the effectiveness of the anti-scam methods it has mandated but also chose to suppress data it should have reported to the US Congress. It is easy to manipulate statistics about fraud for a short while, but impossible to change public perceptions in the long run if the massaged statistics continue to deviate from reality.
There are now signs that Democrat politicians are going to use public anger about the scale of scam activity as a stick to repeatedly beat the Republicans who run the country. A week is a long time in politics, and politicians rapidly forget how many failed policies were treated as successes when their tribe was last in charge. That is why a nonpartisan approach to analyzing data is vital. An unbiased analysis would agree with the opinions of the American public: both government and businesses have done a bad job of reducing scams.
Pew’s survey results can be found here.
