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It’s no secret that online shopping is here to stay. As with anything where lots of money is changing hands, however, there comes risk from people looking to take advantage.
And just as online shopping continues to grow and evolve, scammers are evolving right alongside it. They're developing new tricks and techniques for getting their hands on other peoples’ money, making sufficient identity theft protection all the more important.
To better illustrate the current extent of the problems related to online shopping, the All About Cookies team dug into data released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to find trends and changes relating to online shopping scams in recent years. Read on to see how the number of scam reports has changed over time, how much money is stolen via these scams, and the states where shoppers are being victimized most.
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The year 2020 brought major changes to many people worldwide as the pandemic forced offices to shut down and kept people in their homes. Around the same time as the pandemic took hold, there was a major increase in reports of online shopping fraud — the number of reports more than doubled from quarter one to quarter two of 2020.
While there were some fluctuations, more than 100,000 online shopping fraud reports were filed in the United States every quarter until the end of 2021. Since then, fraud report frequency has been trending down every quarter of 2022.
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As the number of online shopping fraud reports rose, so did the money amount scammers stole from shoppers. In the first quarter of 2020, scammers took $40.6 million via online shopping fraud, but that number rose every quarter until it peaked at $105 million in the first quarter of 2021.
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While the number of quarterly reports and stolen money amounts have been falling since the end of 2021, the money amounts are declining slower than the number of incidents. That may be because scammers are taking more money from each victim than in the past. The median amount of money lost per online shopping scam more than doubled from $89 in the second quarter of 2020 to $199 in the second quarter of 2022.
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| State | Average number of quarterly fraud reports per 100,000 people |
| 1. Washington, D.C. | 34.3 |
| 2. Delaware | 30.0 |
| 3. New Hampshire | 28.4 |
| 4. Maryland | 27.4 |
| 5. Colorado | 27.0 |
| 6. Nevada | 26.5 |
| 7. Oregon | 26.0 |
| 8. Virginia | 25.8 |
| 9. Washington | 25.7 |
| 10. Massachusetts | 25.5 |
The nation’s capital has the lead as the part of the country most afflicted by online shopping fraud. For every 100,000 people living in Washington, D.C., there have been, on average, 34.3 online shopping fraud reports filed every quarter since the start of 2020.
There are five other East Coast states in the top 10 in addition to Washington, D.C. Delaware (30.0 reports per 100,000 people), New Hampshire (28.4), Maryland (27.4), Virginia (25.8), and Massachusetts (25.5) are all among the states with the biggest online shopping fraud issues.
Beyond geographic location, there does appear to be some correlation between the median earnings of each state’s residents and the number of online shopping fraud reports.
Where median income is concerned, Washington, D.C. ($90,088), New Hampshire ($88,465), Maryland ($90,203), Colorado ($82,254), Washington ($84,247), and Massachusetts ($89,645) are also among the top 10 states in the entire country, while Delaware ($71,091), Oregon ($71,562), and Virginia ($80,963) are all among the top 20.
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| State | Average number of quarterly fraud reports per 100,000 people |
| 1. South Dakota | 15.6 |
| 2. North Dakota | 16.3 |
| 3. Mississippi | 17.0 |
| 4. Louisiana | 17.1 |
| 5. Arkansas | 17.2 |
| 6. Oklahoma | 17.9 |
| 7. Iowa | 18.0 |
| 8. Nebraska | 18.3 |
| 9. Alabama | 18.8 |
| 10. Texas | 19.1 |
Conversely, when it comes to states with the lowest rates of online shopping fraud, South Dakota and North Dakota, respectively, are first and second. In fact, South Dakota’s average quarterly rate of 15.6 reports per 100,000 people and North Dakota’s rate of 16.3 per 100,000 are less than half that of Washington, D.C.
Five of the 10 states that experience online shopping fraud the least are also among the bottom states in the country when it comes to median income. Mississippi ($48,716), Louisiana ($52,087), Arkansas ($52,528), Oklahoma ($55,826), and Alabama ($53,913) are all in the bottom 10 states in terms of median income and are also among the least targeted for online shopping fraud.
While online shopping fraud occurs year-round, there are certain times of the year when scammers ramp up their efforts. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the agency “receives a large volume of complaints in the early months of each year, suggesting a correlation with the previous holiday season’s shopping scams.” This indicates that the holidays are a vital period for fraudsters.
The FTC’s data on online shopping fraud complaints backs up the FBI’s assertion. Over the last two years, most states across the country have seen a quarterly increase in fraud report rates between the fourth quarter of a year and the first quarter of the new year.
That increase occurred in 49 of 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C., between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, with Tennessee being the only state that avoided a bump. The increase also happened in 30 states between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
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While the holiday-fueled increase in online shopping fraud has been present across the country for the last two years, the change has been greater in some states compared to others.
From 2020 to 2022, Virginia saw the biggest average increase in fraud reports from the end of one year and the start of another, with online shopping fraud increasing by 27.8% on average from Q4 to Q1 in the Old Dominion state. Four other states see average fraud increases greater than 15% around the holidays, as West Virginia (18.7%), Wyoming (18.4%), Texas (17.8%), and Vermont (15.1%) all exceeded that amount over the last two holiday seasons.
While there will always be scammers and fraudsters trying to get a hold of your money online, there are plenty of ways to keep yourself safe on Amazon, Facebook Marketplace, and other online shopping sites. An essential strategy is using one of the best identity theft protection services:
Data on “Online Shopping and Reviews Fraud” was collected from the Fraud Reports workbook available via the Federal Trade Commission’s Tableau Public account. Data were collected for the time frame covering Q1 2020 through Q2 2022. Data were collected in October and November of 2022. Median income data comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation and is based on the median income for households in each state for 2021.
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