How to protect yourself from payment fraud

Can you put into context what those kinds of losses mean, both on a broad economic scale and for individuals? The U.S.

has a massive economy,

so is it able to just sort of absorb those losses? So unfortunately, that's not generally the case.

$15.9 billion in a year is a pretty significant number.

That's a 430% increase from 2020, just to give you an idea as well as how much it's increasing.

The losses are felt in many different ways.

So consumers are often losing their life savings.

There's elderly folks who are forced to go back to work, right, because of retirement.

has now been taken from them there's also significant emotional impact that that comes with these losses from a small business perspective small businesses could end up closing after one incident that can really impact their bottom line which especially could impact towns you know a lot of small towns are made up of a lot of small businesses and if there's hit by a fraud loss then those businesses was would be forced to start shutting down The large corporations can absorb these losses a little bit better.

But again, there is an impact.

The cost of goods would likely go up because they do have to recover the funds in some way.

In terms of individuals, should Americans just assume at this point that their personal information has been stolen? And if so, what are the implications of that for the everyday person?

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I would say likely, yes, your information is out there in some way, shape, or form.

Just to give you, again, some data points, in 2025, there were roughly 3,300 data breaches, according to Identity Theft Resource Center, and that impacted roughly 278 million personal records.

So all that to say likely your information is out there, but there's things that you can do to protect yourself, right? So monitoring your credit is a great way to understand if somebody has and is using your information.

Frequently checking all of your accounts to make sure there's no unauthorized transactions that have occurred is another great way to just be proactive and protect yourself.

Can you put into context what those kinds of losses mean, both on a broad economic scale and for individuals? The U.S.

has a massive economy,

so is it able to just sort of absorb those losses? So unfortunately, that's not generally the case.

$15.9 billion in a year is a pretty significant number.

That's a 430% increase from 2020, just to give you an idea as well as how much it's increasing.

The losses are felt in many different ways.

So consumers are often losing their life savings.

There's elderly folks who are forced to go back to work, right, because of retirement.

has now been taken from them there's also significant emotional impact that that comes with these losses from a small business perspective small businesses could end up closing after one incident that can really impact their bottom line which especially could impact towns you know a lot of small towns are made up of a lot of small businesses and if there's hit by a fraud loss then those businesses was would be forced to start shutting down The large corporations can absorb these losses a little bit better.

But again, there is an impact.

The cost of goods would likely go up because they do have to recover the funds in some way.

In terms of individuals, should Americans just assume at this point that their personal information has been stolen? And if so, what are the implications of that for the everyday person?

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I would say likely, yes, your information is out there in some way, shape, or form.

Just to give you, again, some data points, in 2025, there were roughly 3,300 data breaches, according to Identity Theft Resource Center, and that impacted roughly 278 million personal records.

So all that to say likely your information is out there, but there's things that you can do to protect yourself, right? So monitoring your credit is a great way to understand if somebody has and is using your information.

Frequently checking all of your accounts to make sure there's no unauthorized transactions that have occurred is another great way to just be proactive and protect yourself.