Why scammers target teenagers, parents of young children

Scammers are going after teens and parents of younger kids.

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Cox Media Group’s Washington Bureau Reporter Blair Miller explains how social media is making these people this age range targets.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, teenagers are being scammed the most right now.

It’s all because of their social media presence. Analysts say parents need to monitor their child’s social media accounts.

“If you don’t do that, if you don’t have some parental controls on technology, you’re just kind of letting them play in the street,” National Cybersecurity Alliance Lisa Plaggemier.

Some of the latest data shows that younger people are 34% more likely to report losing money to fraud than older adults.

Teens don’t usually have a lot of money saved so the financial losses are relatively low.

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According to the FTC, the most common scams happening right now involve teens and online shopping.

After that, there are business imposters and investment scams.

The FTC says that many college students get targeted through their student email addresses with job opportunities, which end up being fake.

Experts say teens are very valuable to scammers because of the potential to access their emails or social media accounts.

“They’ll try and perpetrate fraud on other victims using somebody’s compromised social media account. So basically, it just gives them access to everybody in your friends list,” Plaggemier said.

Additionally, experts say that these scams are about to get even worse because of the use of artificial intelligence.

AI will likely make it harder to know what’s a scam and what is not, experts say.

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