Being an average Joe can’t protect you. Scams are now everyone’s problem, and ESET has a solution

Source: ESET

Date: 22 October 2025

Improved ESET HOME Security battles the growing threat of digital scams.

If you’ve been thinking that you aren’t an interesting target for digital scammers because you are an average person, your bank account isn’t overflowing with cash, and your online activities are mundane, ask yourself these four questions:

Do I have at least one online account of any kind? Do I have a name? A birth date? A home address?

Of course, you do! And all these are valuable data for cybercriminals.

In general, scams are no longer isolated incidents conducted by individual swindlers targeting important people. No, today they are mass-produced, automated, AI-powered, ever-present threats that will, at some point, come to our digital doorsteps.

Recognizing scams as one of the biggest threats to people’s digital lives, ESET has updated ESET HOME Security, the all-in-one protection for households, by boosting its anti-scam capabilities.

PROTECT YOUR HOUSEHOLD NOW!

Because scams endanger small businesses with no or only a few employees, much like the demographics of households, ESET also incorporated these improvements to ESET Small Business Security

Scams are everywhere

People in the U.S. recognize cybercrime as a serious threat, but at the same time, they don’t fear scams going after their finances so much—only 37% of them expect to be targeted in the next year. The reality, however, is much darker.

Cumulatively, scams are a global threat that siphoned away over $1.03 trillion globally in 2023, a figure similar to the entire GDP of countries like South Africa, Singapore, or Colombia.

Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) data shows that almost half of the world’s population encounters a scam at least once a week and that the U.S. suffers from the highest scam losses, averaging $3,520 per victim.

The costliest frauds targeting individuals as reported to the FBI in 2024: 

• Investment Scams: $6.6 billion
• Tech Support Scams: $1.5 billion
• Personal Data Breaches: $1.5 billion
• Non-Payment/Non-Delivery Scams: $0.8 billion
• Confidence/Romance Scams: $0.7 billion

Real-life stories

What ESET researchers see is not only the sheer volume of scams but also their increased complexity and seeming credibility. Fraudsters now have tools, including AI, that allow them to create sophisticated scams with less effort than ever before.

For example, in the second half of 2024, ESET telemetry detected a flood of scam ads, recognizing them under the name Nomani (a wordplay referring to “no money”). Using AI and deepfakes featuring famous personalities such as Joe Rogan or Elon Musk, these ads promoted “secret” investment opportunities, miraculous dietary supplements, and legal or law enforcement assistance. But as the name suggests, those lured into the scams ended up with no money and no real product or service.

Ondrej Kubovič explains Nomani the investment scam:

The hyperscaling of scams and the availability of supporting resources delivered as a service in the underworld can be also demonstrated by Telekopye, an ESET-discovered Telegram bot offered on the black market for a price, allowing its customers — scammers — to easily create their own scam campaigns. Its capabilities vary from fully automated phishing webpages to fraudulent email spam campaigns.

Image 1: This toolkit, used in Telekopye marketplace scam operations, creates phishing links for the seller scam scenario.

If you are among those 67% percent of people who are confident in their abilities to detect scams, be aware that some scams can go far beyond just simple phishing attempts or AI-generated ads.

Recently, ESET researchers uncovered a novel multi-staged attack scenario in which cybercriminals combine various scam tactics to impersonate bank employees protecting customers from a cyberattack in order to wipe out the bank accounts of unknowing victims. This scenario includes pretexting (a fabricated story), phishing, tech support fraud, and a malicious phone app that steals near-field communications (NFC) data for contactless payments.

While it may seem that the scope of this complicated scenario is limited, cybercriminals have already started to try it all around the globe and have found a way to scam people en masse.

How to protect your household

Considering the volume of reported scams, the success rate of financial fraud is shockingly high (37% in the U.S. and 35% in the U.K.). This means that from now on, public awareness and risk prevention should become second nature. Let’s highlight the basics:

Verify before trusting – Rule No. 1 is always verifying the identity and the request/offer of anyone who contacts you unexpectedly — especially if they ask for money or personal information.

– Recognize common scams, and encourage your family members to discuss any incidents they’ve encountered, so you can deal with them together.

Secure your accounts – Ensure that all your family’s online accounts have strong, unique passwords. ESET Unique Password Generator is a good start. If possible, enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

Stay updated – Keep your software, including cybersecurity programs, up to date. Don’t forget about routers.

Report suspicious activity: If you or a family member falls victim to a scam, don’t hesitate to report it to the authorities — they really can help. The FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain has a 66% success rate in freezing reported transactions.

Stop scams with reliable cyber protection

When you have several family members using multiple smart devices, protecting everyone all the time is not an easy task. Robust cyber protection is necessary, but home admins are, naturally, also worried about the affordability and usability of comprehensive solutions.

These concerns aren’t new to ESET, which has been developing and fine-tuning its solutions for more than 30 years. To address all the requirements of you home admins, ESET has created ESET HOME Security, a powerful all-in-one protection solution with multiple product tiers available so that households can configure their protection based on their specific needs. ESET is proud to see that even its Essential tier was recognized last March as AV-Comparatives’ Product of the Year 2024, thanks to its reliability, performance, and user experience.

Table 1: Overview of available features in ESET HOME Security and ESET Small Business Security subscription tiers

With its latest update, ESET HOME Security can deliver even better results when battling both scams and malware. See the features available for Windows users:

Antispam – Emails are one of the most abused online services when it comes to scamming people. With a watchful antispam feature, users can dodge many of those attempts.

Malware protection – This is the crown jewel of ESET technology, combining various advanced reputation and analytical tools to discover, recognize, and stop malware.

Ransomware protection – ESET Ransomware Shield is designed to detect and block processes that resemble ransomware. The now-updated ESET HOME Security also includes the award-winning Ransomware Remediation feature, which creates backups of affected files after a potential ransomware threat is identified.

Phishing protection – With ESET Anti-Phishing, you can stay safe from scams and fake websites. Guard your browser, social apps, SMS, and links from attempts to steal your sensitive information.

ESET Safe Banking & Browsing – This is a browser extension for elevated security and privacy complemented by Website Security Inspector. It scans the rendered HTML directly in the browser, enabling users to distinguish easily between safe and unsafe search results. Stay protected from phishing websites and other threats. Clear your browser data on demand or automatically, reducing digital clutter and optimizing browser efficiency.

ESET Device Control – This tool monitors and alerts users to access attempts to various devices, including webcam and microphone.

“Three things are certain in life”

Before the digital age, the saying used to be that there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. Based on available data and global user experience, perhaps it’s time to add “scams” to the list.

In a world where any pop-up, ad, SMS, email, phone call, URL, or download button could be the start of a scam, reliable online protection can’t only pivot around the detection of malware on devices. ESET understands that modern scammers use a wide variety of tactics and tools, so reliable protection for households needs to be robust, multilayered, and focused on prevention.

With ESET HOME Security, you and your family members can rest assured that your finances and valuable data are safe.

PROTECT YOUR HOUSEHOLD NOW!