Imposter scams continue to remain the most common type of fraud, according to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The FTC said it received more than 2.1 million fraud reports from consumers in 2020, with imposter scams remaining the most common type of fraud reported to the agency.

Meanwhile, online shopping was the second-most common area of fraud logging complaints by customers. There was a surge in such shopping in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Internet services; prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries; and telephone and mobile services rounded out the top five fraud categories.

Consumers reported losing more than US$3.3bil to fraud in 2020, up from US$1.8bil in 2019. Nearly US$1.2bil of losses reported last year were due to imposter scams, while online shopping accounted for about US$246mil in reported losses from consumers.

In 2020, there were nearly 1.4 million reports of identity theft, received through the FTC's IdentityTheft.gov website, about twice as many as in 2019.

Of the identity theft reports received in 2020, 406,375 came from people who said their information was misused to apply for a government document or benefit, such as unemployment insurance. That represents a tremendous increase from 2019, when the number was 23,213.

 - dpa