• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 30, 2025

Here is one area of U.S. leadership in that you might not want to brag about: Americans receive more scam emails and phone calls than people anywhere else on the globe. 

The average American gets nine scam emails, nine calls and seven text messages per week, for a total of 100 scam encounters per month, according to a global study from Ping Identity, conducted by Talker Research. 

The U.K. is second, with 84 scam messages.

In contrast, Australians receive 52 scam messages per month, while consumers in Singapore get 40. 

Moreover, U.K. and U.S. consumers each have 350 spam messages in their spam folder.

Of consumers polled worldwide, 23% have fallen victim to fraud, scam or identity theft.

How do they handle spam? More carefully than you might think — 53% delete the messages immediately and 52% block the sender. And 27% in the United Arab Emirates will try to verify the address, as well 53% in India.

Yet 46% of consumers in India and 35% of consumers in the U.K. are likely answer a phone call that says “potential spam,” versus 31% of Americans and 22% of Swedes.

Meanwhile, 75% are more concerned about the security of their personal information than they were five years ago. And only 23% are very confident that they can determine if a message is legitimate or a scam.

Globally, the most feared types of scams are:

• AI-driven phishing (personalized AI messages written using data from social media or web history that are meant to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information) – 39% 
• Fake apps (apps mimicking legitimate services or vendors, but with malware) – 38%
• Deepfake attacks (AI-generated video or audio mimicking someone you know, such as a celebrity, public figure, or CEO) – 32% 
• Voice cloning scams (using a friend or family member’s voice to create convincing calls) – 31% 
• Synthetic identity fraud (creating a new identity using a combination of both real and fake data) – 29%
• AI-generated influencers and personalities (AI influencer and social media accounts, may ask for donations, merchandise, etc.) – 29%
• Augmented Reality (AR) scams (fake or manipulated digital content within an AR environment; may involve overlaying fake offers, costs, etc.) – 21%

All this calls for new security practices. 

“According to the survey, respondents use just 12 unique passwords for work, and 17 for personal accounts, which is not only a huge inconvenience but exposes significant risk, as passwords are the number one cause of breaches,” said Darryl Jones, vice president of consumer segment strategy at Ping Identity. 

Jones adds, “Passwords alone are not enough to protect your data; they’re easily compromised, and attackers are even impersonating multi-factor authentication requests. A stronger option is to adopt passkeys, which use a private key stored on your device and are protected by biometrics like face or touch ID.”

Talker Research surveyed 10,500 consumers between July 28 and August 11, 2025, including 2,000 in the U.S., 2,000 U.K., 1,000in  France, 1,000 in Germany, 1,000 in Australia, 1,000 in Singapore, 500 in India, 500 in Indonesia, 500 in Netherlands, 500 in Sweden, and 500 in UAE.