Gen Digital Reports Surge in Scams via Ads, Social Media, and Deepfakes
Event summary
- Gen Digital's Q4 2025 Threat Report highlights 45 million blocked fake shop attacks, a 62% increase from Q4 2024.
- Malvertising accounted for 41% of all cyberattacks in 2025, often leading to scams on social media platforms.
- Deepfake scams surged on YouTube, Facebook, and X, primarily targeting financial and cryptocurrency lures.
- Identity breaches increased by 176% quarter-over-quarter, expanding into property records, banking, and credit instruments.
The big picture
Gen Digital's report underscores a shift in cybercrime tactics toward blending scams into everyday digital routines, exploiting trusted platforms like Facebook and YouTube. The surge in malvertising and deepfake scams highlights the growing challenge for tech companies to balance ad revenue with user security. The broadening of identity fraud into property and financial sectors signals a more complex threat landscape requiring coordinated industry and regulatory responses.
What we're watching
- Platform Liability
- How social media platforms will address scam-driven ad revenue, estimated at $16 billion annually per Meta documents.
- Cross-Device Scams
- The pace at which multi-device scams like GhostPairing will evolve, leveraging user behavior across browsers and messaging apps.
- Regulatory Scrutiny
- Whether increased identity fraud in property and financial sectors will trigger stricter regulatory oversight.
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