Nearly $3.5 billion: that is the sum consumers reported losing to impersonation fraud in 2025, spread across more than 1 million reports filed with the Federal Trade Commission. On September 24, 2026, the commission voted 2-0 to open a rulemaking asking whether the online platforms that run ads for those scams should answer for them.
The fraud itself is familiar: a text from a fake bank, a call from a fake agency, a sponsored post for a business that does not exist. The new element is the target. Instead of chasing only the scammer, the agency’s notice examines the ad-optimization systems that decide which ads reach which users, and asks if operating those systems for profit while scam ads flow through them is an unfair or deceptive practice in its own right.
Reported losses behind the $3.5 billion figure
In its September 24 announcement, the FTC states that consumers reported nearly $3.5 billion in losses to impersonation fraud last year and that it received more than 1 million reports. These are reported numbers, and the release adds that the true cost is likely far higher, because many victims never file a complaint. The loss total first appeared in the agency’s June 2026 data release, which broke it down further: bank impersonators accounted for roughly $1 billion, and government impersonators for about $920 million.
Social media stands out in the September release. About $2.1 billion of the losses, nearly 30 percent, came in cases where the first contact with the victim was on a social media platform.
Ad-optimization practices in the advance notice
The document is an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, the earliest and least binding step in the process. It seeks public comment on whether platforms’ ad-optimization practices, meaning the tools that tune which ads are shown to which users, further impersonation scams in ways that amount to unfair or deceptive conduct. It also asks what the agency should consider doing about that, and the rulemaking page lists advertiser vetting, ad monitoring, investigation, removal of scam ads and discipline of offending advertisers among the possible measures. Nothing in the notice is a rule yet. “Wants platforms on the hook” describes a question the commission is putting to the public, with the answer still to be written.
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, framed the stakes in the release: impersonation scams, “especially when amplified by digital platforms that profit from them,” do more than rob Americans of their money, and free markets depend on trust, transparency and consumers’ ability to make informed choices.
The version of the notice in the Federal Register, published October 1, 2026, supplies the longer argument. It runs to about 40 questions grouped into six categories and cites a Reuters investigation that estimated Meta earned roughly $16 billion, about 10 percent of its 2024 revenue, from scam advertisements. That estimate is Reuters’, repeated in the notice, and not an FTC finding. The notice also treats platforms’ financial incentive to maximize ad revenue as a possible conflict with consumer protection, which is the tension the proposed rule would try to resolve.
The 2024 Impersonation Rule and its limit
The commission already has a rule on this subject. The Impersonation Rule took effect on April 1, 2024, and it lets the FTC go to federal court to recover money for harmed consumers and seek civil penalties against anyone who poses as a government agency or a business. When the rule took effect, the agency counted $1.1 billion in reported impersonation losses for 2023, which was more than triple the 2020 figure. The 2025 total is again more than triple that 2023 count.
The rule was issued in March 2024 to reach the impersonators themselves. According to the new notice, it does not address platform conduct that furthers these scams. A scammer who buys an ad and a platform that optimizes its delivery sit on different sides of the existing text, and the advance notice exists to ask whether the second needs a rule of its own. The June data release says the commission has recovered more than $70 million for consumers through a dozen enforcement actions under the Impersonation Rule since 2024, all of them aimed at the people running the scams.
The 2-0 vote and the comment window
The commission vote to submit the advance notice to the Federal Register was 2-0. Comments are due 60 days after Federal Register publication, which puts the deadline at November 30, 2026, and the agency accepts them through its public comment process.
The record assembled before that date will rest on a number the agency itself calls an undercount: nearly $3.5 billion in reported losses, from more than 1 million reports, in a single year, with $2.1 billion of it traced to first contact on social media.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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