TL;DR: The FTC's 2024 Consumer Sentinel Data Book recorded 383,441 online shopping and negative-review fraud reports, with 76% of those reporting a financial loss totaling $432 million and a median loss of $130 per victim.
The FTC's 2024 Consumer Sentinel Data Book recorded 383,441 online shopping and negative-review fraud reports, with 76% of those reporting a financial loss totaling $432 million and a median loss of $130 per victim.
What the Data Shows
The relatively low median loss compared to other scam types shows online shopping fraud is a high-volume, lower-per-incident problem — the kind that's easy to dismiss individually but adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year in aggregate.
Why This Matters
Numbers like these are a reminder that this isn’t a rare event — it’s a routine risk. Checking whether your own information has already been exposed takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.
If this looks similar to something else you've seen, it's worth reading Password Reuse Statistics: Why It's Still a Problem.
This pattern shows up elsewhere too — see Phishing Statistics 2026: How Common Is It Really?.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do the numbers actually show?
The FTC's 2024 Consumer Sentinel Data Book recorded 383,441 online shopping and negative-review fraud reports, with 76% of those reporting a financial loss totaling $432 million and a median loss of $130 per victim.
What does this mean for you?
The relatively low median loss compared to other scam types shows online shopping fraud is a high-volume, lower-per-incident problem — the kind that's easy to dismiss individually but adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year in aggregate.
Where does this data come from?
This data is drawn from FTC – Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024, a primary reporting source for fraud and identity theft data.