Reported Impersonation Scams Surge 148% as AI Takes Hold – Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com

The volume of impersonation scams has soared 148% year-on-year (YoY) thanks in part to AI tools making life easier for cybercriminals, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).

The US non-profit’s new 2025 Trends in Identity Report is based on analysis of identity crimes (compromise, theft and misuse) reported to it by victims from April 1 2024 to March 31 2025.

Overall, the number of these reports actually fell by 31 percentage points over the previous year, although the number of victims reporting multiple incidents increased from 15% to 24% over the same period.

Impersonation scams have become the most favored fraud type for threat actors. They now account for 34% of scams, versus 10% for employment fraud and 9% for Google Voice scams.

Read more on impersonation fraud: Impersonation Scams Net Fraudsters $1.1bn in a Year

The most common targets for impersonation were businesses (51%) and financial institutions (21%). Although there was a 32% annual decrease in reports of impersonation of government agencies, this remained the third-most impersonated entity.

Over the period, business impersonation typically involved phishing emails, or threat actors SEO-ing fake websites and posting search engine ads with fraudulent customer service numbers so that consumers would be more likely to encounter them online. Financial impersonation was more about inbound calls to victims, the ITRC said.

AI Starts to Make its Mark

The non-profit claimed that AI is helping to optimize such campaigns.

“We are only at the very beginning of what AI can do to facilitate identity and cybercrimes,” argued ITRC CEO, Eva Velasquez.

“The power of AI in the hands of professional criminals is accelerating a shift we’ve long warned about – where traditional crime patterns give way to a landscape in which anyone can be a victim.”

AI is helping malicious actors to launch more effective scams and identity fraud campaigns at scale, by empowering them to create fake websites, send phishing emails/texts and post ads on search engines, the report noted.

Velasquez was also at pains to point out that fewer reported identity crimes over the past year isn’t the good news that it might at first appear.

“One trend that has continued is a decline in the number of victims reporting identity crimes,” she said.

“Fewer people are reporting instances of identity theft, fraud and scams, but there is every reason to believe it is just that – fewer reports, not fewer crimes being committed.”

Most (53%) reports involving “identity misuse” involved account takeover, while 36% were linked to new account creation, of which credit card accounts were most popular for cybercriminals.