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The Sentinel Team nears its goal of bringing in 100 substantive data partners. Thanks to our valued partners, who range from Apple to Zelle, our data has accreted over years. We welcome some important new partners: Apple, Inc.; the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico; FedEx; the First National Bank of Omaha, Nebraska; and the return of Utilities United Against Scams. These new entities provide quality consumer reports in areas such as business impostors, online shopping, and unsolicited emails and texts to consumers. |
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A new Data Spotlight about business and government imposters shines a light on the top imposter scams. According to the Data Spotlight, the statistics are staggering. In 2023, the FTC received more than 330,000 reports of business impersonation scams and nearly 160,000 reports of government impersonation scams. That’s nearly half of all frauds reported directly to the FTC. The financial injury also is breathtaking, with reported losses to impersonation scams topping $1.1 billion in 2023. That’s more than three times what consumers reported in 2020.
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New to Sentinel or just need a refresher course? The next online Sentinel training session will be on Wednesday, July 10th at 12:00 EST; the following one will be on Thursday, August 15th at 12:00 EST. Please contact sentinel@ftc.gov to register or find out about future monthly sessions. |
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Have you seen the public data visualizations of our Sentinel aggregate data? Explore Data lets you dig into consumer data on fraud, identity theft, unwanted calls, and other consumer problems based on Sentinel data. Our interactive dashboards let you spot trends and find out about top reports in your state and around the country. You can also dig into data about refunds resulting from law enforcement actions. The agency’s annual report on refunds notes that such actions resulted in $324 million in refunds to consumers in 2023.
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If you’ve seen a hashtag #BRE in a consumer report, it means that the system is automatically categorizing some reports according to the type of scam. Using such machine learning helps classify the vast volume of data that we receive. As a result, you are able to sort reports by Product Service Code, which is generally the scam type or the good or service offered to the consumer. |
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Combatting AI-enabled fraud is a battle the FTC is fighting on many fronts and all of us have a stake in protecting consumers. In November, the FTC announced the Voice Cloning Challenge aimed at fostering breakthrough ideas on preventing, monitoring, and evaluating pernicious voice cloning. This Spring, the agency revealed the winners of the challenge.
Need to explain to consumers how to avoid being hacked online? Here’s a consumer advisory with clear information on the topic.
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