Study says scam risk tied to life pressures, not age

OXIL has published research linking online scam targeting to people's circumstances rather than their age. The study found higher reported vulnerability among younger adults and people under strain.

The findings challenge the long-held focus on older people as the group most exposed to fraud. Instead, situational pressures such as tiredness, financial stress, major life changes and dependency emerged as stronger indicators of exposure to scam attempts.

The cyber intelligence company found that 89% of people had received what they believed to be a scam attempt. Those most likely to report attempted scams included people with linguistic disabilities at 35%, people with a gambling problem at 29%, those who describe themselves as impulsive at 26%, parents of pre-school-age children at 23% and people who had recently experienced a bereavement at 21%.

Its survey also found that 62% of respondents said situational factors had played a role in making them more vulnerable to scams. Among people aged 18 to 29, that figure rose to 81%.

Situational risk

According to the research, tiredness and lack of sleep were the most commonly cited factors among people who said circumstances had affected their ability to spot a scam, at 29%. Financial worry followed at 22%, while a hectic work-life balance was cited by 21%.

The pattern across different groups suggests disruption and distraction create openings for scammers. OXIL argues that fraud risk is better understood as situational than demographic.

Carolina Caeiro set out that view in the findings.

"The fraud conversation has been stuck on the wrong question for years. We keep asking who is targeted, and the answer we assume is older people on their own. But our research shows the real question is when. When someone is exhausted, financially pressured, going through a break-up or managing a dependency, their ability to pause and question what's in front of them drops. That's not a character flaw. That's a human condition. And it's exactly what modern scams are built to exploit," said Carolina Caeiro, director of policy at OXIL Research.

Scam patterns

OXIL also found links between specific life situations and particular types of scam. People going through a house move were disproportionately targeted by urgency-based fraud involving fake deadlines, fines and demands.

Those with a gambling problem were more than twice as likely to encounter fake romance scams. People facing financial difficulty were more likely than the national average to be drawn towards get-rich-quick schemes and cash prize fraud.

The work combines a large-scale study of scam links with polling of adults in the UK and Ireland. OXIL said it analysed 29 million scam links using semantic relevance scores, scaled from a base set of 13,860 links through human-in-the-loop large language model analysis.

The qualitative element was conducted online by UK Omnibus Group for OXIL among a nationally representative sample of 2,300 adults across the UK and Ireland.

Safeguarding approach

Alongside the findings, OXIL argued for a safeguarding model in scam prevention, drawing on frameworks used in health, education and social care. The aim, it said, should be to build protections around people during periods of pressure rather than relying mainly on awareness campaigns directed at individuals.

Alice Taylor said that approach should shape how organisations respond.

"This research matters for how fraud intelligence is built and applied. Tackling scammers is not about telling victims what they could have done differently, how they could have educated themselves, or leaving them to blame themselves. Instead, we need organisations across sectors to do more to safeguard people. We are developing continuing professional development training on safeguarding adults against scams and fraud. This will enable practitioners from law enforcement, healthcare and social services to add scam and fraud awareness to their existing safeguarding frameworks," said Alice Taylor, senior scam and fraud researcher at OXIL Research.

OXIL, also known as Oxford Information Labs, operates in cyber intelligence and digital policy. It also owns the Global Signal Exchange, which it describes as a clearing house for threat signals linked to scams, fraud and other cybercrime.

The findings add to a broader debate over how governments, financial firms, telecoms groups and online platforms should measure fraud risk. Rather than centring prevention efforts on fixed demographic assumptions, the research points to periods of stress, change and reduced attention as the moments when scam attempts are most likely to land.