How to Spot Smishing, QR Fraud, and Voice Clones
For most of 2025, AI-generated scams were still a minority of what hit inboxes and phones — a growing threat, but not yet the dominant one. Then December arrived. According to Hoxhunt's 2026 Phishing Trends Report, AI-assisted attacks surged from 4% of all reported phishing in November 2025 to 56% in December, a 14-fold jump in a single month driven by criminal actors using generative AI to mass-produce convincing lures at zero skill cost. That share had stabilized at around 40% through early 2026 and, as of this Independence Day weekend, has held there — meaning four in ten phishing attempts a reader encounters today are AI-generated. The Federal Trade Commission confirmed the human cost: imposter scams — the category that includes smishing, voice cloning, and QR-code fraud — were the most reported type of fraud in 2025 for the ninth consecutive year, with losses climbing nearly 20% to $3.5 billion.
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