Almost half of the youngest consumers admit to having been the target of an ‘online’ fraud, the most common scam being the one that arrives through a text message, and in a context in which three out of four Spaniards concerned about the protection of your personal data.
More than a third of Spaniards (35%) toadmits to being the target of fraud through text messagesphone calls, emails or during your ‘online’ activities in the last three months.
And it is Generation Z -those born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s- the most impacted in this regard, with 47 percent of consumers in this group stating that they have been targeted for fraud.
These data come from the ‘Consumer Pulsecorrespondiente’ study, by TransUnion, corresponding to the second quarter of 2023, which explores the behavior of Spanish consumers regarding identity theft in online transactions.
The most denounced pattern of fraud among those who claim to have been targeted by someone was ‘smishing’ (text messages in which personal data is fraudulently requested), with 35 percent.
Half (47%) of the individuals included in the Baby Boomers group – in the study, those born between 1944 and 1964 – claim to have received a message of this type in the last three months.
Concerns related to identity theft and the sharing of personal information remain high. Three out of four (75%) Spaniards confess that they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” when they share personal information.
The reasons given are the possibility of their information being stolen (70%), the invasion of privacy (60%) or the fact that their data could be used to receive unsolicited commercial communications (37%).
In general, the most frequent fraud schemes in Spain, in addition to the ‘smishing’, include card theft, fraudulent charges, ‘vishing’ (phone calls fraudulently requesting personal information) or scams in which an illegitimate third party poses as an official vendor in a Online store’.
