Account Scams Impersonating Online Service Providers
Account scams are on the rise, targeting members of the public with warnings of unauthorized logins or account activity. Of course, some of these messages are legitimate and not part of fraudster-led account scams. Scams such as this play on the emotions of the victim; scammers are counting on the message recipients to spring into action to protect their accounts from scammers, unknowingly becoming a victim of the account scams until it is too late.
What Are Account Scams?
Accounts scams are fraudulent robotexts, robocalls or emails that appear to be from a service provider, alerting you to unauthorized logins or suspicious account activity. With so many of us now using digital services or going ‘paperless’ with our communications, the reports of account scams are rising.
Some of the services that account scams reported to TNS have impersonated:
- Bank accounts
- Mobile payment apps
- Cryptocurrency exchanges
- Streaming services
- eCommerce websites
- Email accounts
Red Flags of Account Scams
Account scams appear legitimate on the surface, however there are many red flags that give the phone calls, SMS messages and emails away as scams. Above all, it is important not to panic or let emotion override your rationality – this is what scammers are counting on happening.
Red flags of account scams include:
- Suspicious links or URLs – a classic phishing tactic, the URLs may look legitimate at first glance, however there is usually something slightly different from a legitimate link. If in doubt, do not click.
- Unusual login notifications – such as the SMS message example above, receiving messages regarding login attempts or unauthorized withdrawals are both signs of account scams. These may be legitimate but always check with the provider before clicking any links in these messages.
- Requests for personal information – any correspondence that asks for your login details, passwords or PIN numbers are not legitimate; service providers will never request your personal information.
- Urgent or threatening language – one of the universal red flags of a scam, including account scams, is the use of urgent or threatening language. Legitimate businesses would never try and force you into making withdrawals, threaten with arrest or anything that demands immediate action.
Reporting Account Scams
If you believe that you have been a victim of account scams, you should immediately contact your bank and report the incident to the FTC.
It is always best practice to never engage with unknown numbers and report phone numbers being used by scammers to your carrier. If you believe you are a victim of a scam, you can report it to your local police, state Attorney General’s office and the FTC.
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Robocall Heatmap
Discover which scams are most prominent across the US in our nationwide heatmap that plots the state-by-state picture of scams on a monthly basis throughout 2025.
Unwanted Calls Nationwide Snapshot
TNS estimates that more than 97 billion unwanted calls were made in the last 12 months representing a 47% increase over the last 12 months versus the previous 12 months. This is an increase from the 74 billion unwanted that were recorded between Feb 2024 to Feb 2025. Unwanted calls decreased 0.5% from August to September at 10.1B. This represents an 42% increase from September 2024 to September 2025.
Unwanted calls are comprised of nuisance calls and high-risk calls. The severity of harm of nuisance calls are moderate. The severity of harm for high-risk calls is deemed as a major invasion of privacy that can cause emotional distress.
TNS Heatmap of Originating Unwanted Calls
Top 10 Area Codes for Generating Unwanted Calls – September 2025 |
Top 10 Area Codes for Generating Unwanted Calls – September 2024 |
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TNS Unwanted Call Indices
TNS Calling Trust Index – Last 12 Months |
TNS Complaint Index – Last 12 Months |
TNS Calling Trust Index is a measure of the crowd-source feedback for the unwanted calls that TNS receives in relation to the total number of calls to a subscriber. The index gives an indication of the consumer trust in voice calling and pulls data from our robocall protection platform TNS Call Guardian®. |
Complaint Index is a measure of the FCC complaints for the Do-Not-Call List in relation to the total number of unwanted calls seen by TNS. The index gives an indication to how many consumers are reporting complaints to the FCC relative to the number of unwanted robocalls they receive. |
Take Action for Robocall Protection, go to: ReportARobocall.com
TNS Call Guardian uses real-time call events combined with crowd-sourced data to create accurate and comprehensive reputation profiles differentiating legitimate users from abusive, fraudulent and unlawful ones. Reporting robocall incidents adds important data making our solutions more robust.
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