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While everything about the past year has felt strange and new — I just can’t say unprecedented another time — we could see one thing coming: scammers seized any opportunity to take advantage of the confusion and heightened emotion surrounding COVID-19. So, the FTC sprang into action, suing companies that made deceptive claims and did not correct them, making sure that deceptive claims for hundreds of products were quickly removed, sending hundreds of warning letters, and creating a dedicated site to share information as quickly as possible. We kept moving on other issues, too, got back $483 million to consumers who lost money to frauds, and expanded our outreach. Here’s the highlight reel from 2020.

  • Reporting for duty. The agency launched a new streamlined and user-friendly website, ReportFraud.ftc.gov, where you can easily report scams, frauds, and bad business practices. The FTC has long encouraged people to report these issues to the agency when they encounter them — whether or not they lost money to the fraud.
  • Helping every community. The FTC kicked off a new initiative, the Community Advocate Center, aimed at partnering with community legal aid organizations to expand our outreach to lower-income communities to encourage them to report fraud and provide them with advice to help recover.
  • Reaching out. Last year, the Commission published 470 consumer blog posts (243 in English, 227 in Spanish) sent to more than 367,000 subscribers: more than 312,000 in English and 55,000 in Spanish. The FTC’s blog posts from 2020 (in English) logged more than 7.9 million views.
  • Just watch. FTC videos online logged 2 million views. The most viewed video was Your Source for a Truly Free Credit Report? Annual Credit Report.com; it got 140,600 views on the FTC's websites and 74,300 views on YouTube. In 2020, the FTC’s YouTube channel gained 7,700 new followers (for a total of 22,400).
  • You’ve got mail. In 2020, the Commission had a  total of 2.2 million people who got the agency’s email updates.
  • Social life. The FTC’s social networks had a healthy growth spurt last year: for Facebook, more than 10,000 new followers (for a total of 89,000); for Twitter, nearly 9,000 new followers (for a total of 78,000); and for LinkedIn, 3,900 new followers (for a total of 15,200).
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The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

  • We won’t post off-topic comments, repeated identical comments, or comments that include sales pitches or promotions.
  • We won’t post comments that include vulgar messages, personal attacks by name, or offensive terms that target specific people or groups.
  • We won’t post threats, defamatory statements, or suggestions or encouragement of illegal activity.
  • We won’t post comments that include personal information, like Social Security numbers, account numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. To file a detailed report about a scam, go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.

Robert
March 25, 2021
The FTC email "alerts" extremely helpful and Kudos to the many folks who send them!
evergreen3
March 25, 2021
Thank you very much for alerting us to the many scams related to the pandemic.
D.K.
March 26, 2021
I have been using your information as reference material for a consumer fraud prevention program for 4 years now, and it just keeps getting better and better. Thanks for the outstanding efforts to all involved.
FTC Staff
March 30, 2021

In reply to by D.K.

That's great to hear; thank you for letting us know. We also have free print information at www.bulkorder.ftc.gov, COVID-19 related information at www.FTC.gov/coranivirus, and streamlined consumer information at www.consumer.gov. 

Anne S.
March 26, 2021
Last year I had an attempted online fraud. They threatened me if I did not comply to their wishes. I outsmarted them with an address that did not match my bank address. I alerted the bank from my other phone, and they froze my accounts immediately. The last time this happened, I called my bank first, and not the online fraudsters. Otherwise I just hang up on threatening calls.
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