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A digital inclusion report · First edition · October 2026

The Digital Trust Deficit

Who carries the cost of online scams?

Online scams reach everyone, and the harm is not shared equally. This report brings together figures from 31 countries on who scams reach, who is protected and who recovers, what has already cut losses, and twelve changes that would help. Every figure is dated, sourced and labelled as a reported loss, a survey estimate, a modelled estimate or a company figure.

Download the report (PDF, 34 pages, 2 MB) Read it in your browser
The report cover: a padlock made of yellow dots on a black page, with the title The Digital Trust Deficit, who carries the cost of online scams?

What the report finds

18.1% vs 12.9%of people with disabilities in Australia experienced personal fraud in a year, against people without disability. In all four countries that measure it, people with disabilities experience more fraud.
39% vs 20%of bank-fraud victims in the United States who had no savings for a US$400 emergency did not get all their money back, against victims with three months of savings.
1 in 5complaints to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2025 came from people aged 60 and over, and those complaints carried 37% of the money reported lost, US$7.7 billion.
200 millionmore women than men do not use mobile internet in low- and middle-income countries, and women name safety and security as their top barrier.
0 of 7large technology companies reviewed publish the money people lost to scams on their services, the refunds paid, or the revenue from adverts later removed as scams.
54% → 65%of scam losses by value are refunded in the United Kingdom since banks were made to pay, and 97% of the claims the rule covers.

The people most affected are also the least counted. Most fraud agencies do not publish losses by disability, sex, income or language, so the cost is counted by the people who lose the money and by their banks, police and health services.

Every dot in the report is a person’s complaint. 1,008,597 dots, one for each complaint made to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2025, run from the cover across the top of every page to the back. The yellow dots are the 201,266 complaints from people aged 60 and over. Most fraud is never reported.

Inside the report

Page 2: At a glance, who carries the harm, with six headline figures Page 8: Who is hit hardest, with the share of complaints and money lost by people aged 60 and over Page 17: the United Kingdom refund rule, before and after
  1. If it has just happened, and what you can do this week
  2. Why this report
  3. What is known
  4. Who is reached, who is protected, who recovers
  5. Most fraud is never counted
  6. Who carries the cost, and what changes it
  7. What platforms publish, and what others found
  8. Around the world: institutions in their own words
  9. Charities, libraries and journalists
  10. Twelve changes that would help
  11. Find your place
  12. How to read the figures, and how this report was made

If it has just happened

Stop all contact. Call your bank on the number printed on your card. Report the scam and say where it began. The first-hour guide puts the steps in order for your country, and the official help page lists where to report in 33 countries and territories.

Free checks that go with the report

Press release

Read the launch release, distributed by EIN Presswire on 26 October 2026: New report finds people with disabilities, people without savings and older people bear greater harm from online scams. Journalists will find the release, images and contact details on the press page.

Quote it, share it, build on it

The report is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence: share it, quote it and build on it, with credit to UtilForge.org. Spokesperson and media contact: Lindsay McDonald, lindsay@utilforge.org. Journalists and researchers can write to her for the source table behind any figure.

Corrections

Every correction will be listed here with its date. Send corrections to Lindsay McDonald at lindsay@utilforge.org. UtilForge.org plans to update the report as new data and new laws arrive.

No corrections yet. First edition published 26 October 2026.