Blindly trusting every text message on your phone just cost Americans over 60 a staggering $3.4 billion in 2023 alone. That urgent alert claiming your bank account is locked? The Medicare text demanding immediate verification? The delivery notification asking for personal details? They’re likely smishing scams—and seniors are getting hit harder than anyone else.
While people over 60 represent just 24% of identity theft claims, they account for over 41% of the $8.2 billion in total losses. The math is brutal: scammers know exactly where the money is.
Why Your Retirement Savings Make You a Target
Criminals assume seniors have substantial savings worth stealing through fake alerts.
“Older adults are attractive targets because scammers assume they have healthy retirement savings,” explains Josh Hodges from the National Council on Aging. The numbers prove this targeting works devastatingly well.
Reports of seniors losing $10,000 or more to imposter scams quadrupled between 2020 and 2024. Even more alarming: losses exceeding $100,000 increased nearly sevenfold during the same period. These aren’t random attacks—they’re calculated strikes against your life savings, delivered through text messages designed to look exactly like legitimate communications from your bank, Medicare, or delivery companies.
Spotting the Red Flags That Save Your Money
Simple verification steps can prevent devastating financial losses from text scams.
Real banks never send texts demanding immediate action or asking you to click links to “verify” accounts. Legitimate Medicare communications don’t arrive via urgent text alerts. Actual delivery services provide tracking numbers you can verify independently on their websites.
Before responding to any financial text, call the organization directly using the phone number on your statements or cards—never the number provided in the suspicious message. When in doubt, delete the text and contact the company through official channels you trust.
Your phone’s default settings can help too. Enable spam filtering in your messaging app and never click links in unexpected texts, even if they look official. The scammers sending 19.2 billion spam texts monthly are counting on that split-second decision to trust a familiar-looking logo. Your skepticism is your best defense against becoming another statistic in this $3.4 billion theft epidemic.
