Just from a survey, we see a massive change in the way American consumers perceive digital threats, with the increase of AI driven scams now at the top of the cybersecurity concern list. This leaves traditional malware and viruses in 5th place. This means shoppers should focus more on social engineering protection than virus protection.
Survey reveals shifting consumer fears and rising financial losses
This is according to a survey by PCMag and CNET from Sept 9 to Sept 12 2026. There seems to be a growing fear of synthetic media and automated scams.
When we look at the survey results, we can see that the amount of attempted scams happening in everyday digital life is overwhelming. Over 80% of people get scam calls or emails at least once a week. And over 76% of users receive scam text messages at least this often. It's clear that everyday users are heavily exposed, and traditional security solutions might not be enough to protect against continuous targeted attacks.
When we look at how these scams are delivered, we can see a change in technique. Malicious sites have become the main point of entry for scams. This is now ahead of email and SMS attacks.
This makes it harder to catch for everyday users that may just be looking for basic link warnings. 62% of US adults agree or strongly agree that AI based scams are more dangerous than traditional malware and viruses, according to survey results. This is in keeping with the warning signs from the industry that the automation of phishing attacks is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
There has been a massive loss of confidence in the average users ability to recognize threats within the last year. According to Marc Vos, Senior Global PR Manager at McAfee "people have lost 33% confidence in their ability to spot a scam compared to the previous year". Even now, there are huge financial losses to be recorded.
Malwarebytes estimates global scam losses for 2025 to be at $442B and $210B in the US. This is forcing security firms, such as Norton, Avast, Bitdefender and more, to educate their users in addition to having security solutions in place.
With such a high exposure to threat coupled with changing vectors and waning consumer confidence, it's a difficult situation to be in. Everyday users are going to have to adjust to the fact that they now have to look for web based scams as the main concern, not just running a virus scan. With AI tools being more accessible for attackers, it becomes more on the users head to verify than rely on automated filtering solutions.
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