Scams near you, by the numbers

Every day, people across the country are telling the FTC what happened to them. Maybe they lost money to a scam, lost their identity, or just spotted something that looked fishy and wanted somebody to know. All of that information helps FTC and other law enforcement agencies investigate and bring cases against scammers. And, every year, we roll up all that data and give it back to you in an annual data book. Now, though, you don’t have to wait a year to find out what’s happening.

Starting today, the FTC is making that Consumer Sentinel data available to you every quarter. If you visit ftc.gov/data, you’ll find an interactive online tool that lets you find things like:

• What scams are people reporting in your state, and how much money are people losing?
• What are the top states reporting, say, prizes and sweepstakes fraud? Or other frauds?
• What’s changed over time, from 2014 to now?
• What are military consumers reporting?
• How much money have older or younger people reported losing to fraud?
• How are identity thieves misusing people’s information?

This new quarterly resource might especially interest you if you’re an academic, into research, in the media, or just really interested in consumer protection – or what’s happening with scams near you. Knowing about scams helps you avoid them, so play with the data, download it you want to do more analysis, and print it if you want to share it.

We’ll also be releasing periodic Data Spotlights on trends or hot topics we’ve spotted in the data – like the one released earlier today. If you spot something in the data that you find interesting, please leave it in the comments.

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