New FTC report to Congress on scams and older adults

Every year, the FTC reports to Congress on the agency’s recent efforts to protect older adults. Check out this year’s report for new scam and fraud trends, FTC cases and rulemakings that impacted older adults, and updates on Pass It On and other outreach programs.

What else is new? This year’s report also highlights work from the Scams Against Older Adults Advisory Group, which the FTC formed in 2022 as part of the Stop Senior Scams Act. Over the past two years, the Advisory Group’s four committees — focused on industry training, research, education and outreach, and technology — have met regularly to discuss ways to better identify and stop scams that affect older adults.

Committee members, including dozens of government agencies, consumer advocates, and industry representatives, collaborated on a number of different tools. You can find these all at ftc.gov/olderadults:

• The Industry Training Committee created a set of principles for effective employee training about scams, including examples that can be adapted for different sectors and business settings.
• The Scam Prevention Research Committee reviewed the research landscape on scam prevention messaging and shared their own takeaways and recommendations for much needed future research.
• The Consumer Education and Outreach Committee collaborated on a set of principles to guide any organization, of any size, in communicating with older adults and other target audiences.
• The Technology and New Methods Committee is exploring how technological tools might be used to disrupt scams, and the importance of sharing information about best practices.

For more, check out the report or go to ftc.gov/olderadults. And — as always — if you spot a fraud or scam, tell the FTC: ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

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