Almost half of mobile users now report being exposed to various scams and threats on a daily basis, a new report says. The security vendor Malwarebytes polled 1300 adults in the US, UK, Austria, Germany and also Switzerland for its latest report. This significant risk exposure was reportedly highest in the United States (51%) and also the United Kingdom (49%) for users. Two-thirds of all respondents admitted it is increasingly hard to spot a scam from any legitimate online communications. Over a third of those polled also stated that they had unfortunately fallen victim to a mobile scam in the past year.
These various mobile security threats come through many different channels, most commonly being email, phone calls, and also SMS messages. Other popular channels for these scams include social media, various messaging apps, and also online buying and selling platforms. Social engineering is the most commonly encountered threat by mobile users, with almost twenty percent of respondents falling victim. This finding chimes with other separate studies which have tracked a significant growth in mobile-related phishing attacks in recent years. A Zimperium study from September 2024 claimed that 82% of all phishing sites now primarily target various mobile devices.
According to the Malwarebytes report, various extortion threats are also unfortunately quite commonplace for many different mobile device users.
Seventeen percent of users have fallen victim to this type of threat, including ransomware, sextortion, and also various deepfake scams. Around a fifth of the people who were surveyed even said they had experienced a frightening virtual kidnapping attempt by criminals. This constant barrage of various mobile threats is taking a significant psychological toll on the victims, the report found.
Three-quarters of the respondents told Malwarebytes they’d experienced some emotional harm, such as significant mental health issues or harassment.
Malwarebytes’ senior privacy advocate, David Ruiz, argued that these modern mobile threats are personal as well as being highly technical. He added that as cyber-threats grow more sophisticated, we must empower users with the right tools and also the correct knowledge. No one should ever have to accept scams as being the normal and expected cost of participating in our modern digital life. The report’s authors want people to feel completely confident in spotting, stopping, and also reporting scams no matter how intimate. This empowerment is crucial in today’s increasingly complex and also very dangerous digital environment for all users of mobile devices.
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