Young adults lose most money to scams: BBB

Young adults are losing more money to scams than older age groups, according to the latest data from the Better Business Bureau. In that new report, "Targeting our Youth: How Scams are impacting ages 18-24", while scams target all ages, when it comes to the age group 18-24, it had the highest reported median dollar loss among all age groups.

Breaking down the report, ages 18-24 reported a higher percentage of scams targeting them on Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter. That age group reported a higher percentage of scams via online payment apps and bank and debit cards.

ALSO SEE: First flu deaths of 2023-24 season reported by NCDHHS

The top five riskiest scams for the 18-24 age group according to the BBB are employment, online purchase, cryptocurrency, rental, and investment scams. Many of these scams happen on copycat websites made by scammers, which make it appear you're dealing with a legitimate company.

"A big thing to remember is always to only go to secure websites so that's when that 'S' stands for secure and the lock symbol on the URL is a good way to make sure that the website's secure. You also want to make sure that it's a website that is from a company that's reputable," said Meredith Radford with the BBB.

When it comes to employment scams for the 18-24 age group, the average loss is about $1,800. To protect yourself be on the lookout for jobs that claim to be inspecting or reshipping packages, or any jobs that claim you are the middleman for cryptocurrency or check cashing, as those are all scams.