Before the numbers, a test
Three real messages. For each one, decide: scam, or legitimate? Answer honestly, as if you'd received them on your own phone.
No spelling mistakes, no link, no aggressive urgency — just affection and a small logistical hiccup. This is the exact format of the "family emergency" or "grandparent" scam: a new number, a plausible money request, an appeal to family trust rather than fear. There's nothing to "spot" in the classic sense — that's what makes it dangerous.
The trap is in one tiny detail, easy to miss on a phone screen: the domain isn't a real toll agency site. Both the FBI and FTC have flagged fake unpaid-toll texts — impersonating E-ZPass, SunPass, FasTrak, and others — as one of the fastest-growing scams in America. Everything else about the message reads as plausible.
This one is real — major banks do send fraud-confirmation texts in exactly this format, and this one explicitly states it will never ask for a PIN or password. After two traps, suspicion pushes toward rejecting everything — that doesn't work either. Neither blind trust nor blanket suspicion is reliable. That's the whole problem.
Here, you were warned, calm, on a page that told you a test was coming. The real message arrives on a Tuesday at 6pm, while you're doing something else, and it never announces itself.
See every manipulation mechanism →
Did this really just happen to you? Here's what it means →
"My bank will reimburse me anyway"
That's the most common assumption — and the least reliable one. Federal rules (Regulation E) require banks to investigate unauthorized transactions, but the protection has a well documented gap: transfers you were tricked into authorizing yourself — like a Zelle payment sent after a scammer posing as your bank convinced you to "move money to a safe account" — often fall outside that guarantee, because the system recorded it as authorized.
Reimbursement, in practice
CFPB complaints about Zelle fraud rose 86% between 2022 and 2024, with reported losses exceeding $400 million a year — and a New York Attorney General lawsuit against Zelle's operator over fraud handling is headed to trial in 2026.
The face-off
Egidio's price
Cost of a scam
The fear podium
Records nobody wants to hold — and the people who ended up holding them never wanted to either.
The dollar amount isn't the point. The point is that every one of these people assumed, the day before, that this only happened to someone else.
The math, laid out
We take the sturdiest figure available — an official average, not an extreme case — and let it speak.
Years of protection
A single average internet crime loss, at the reported average of $19,300, represents:
$19,300 ÷ £29.99 (annual subscription)The percentage, inverted
Seen another way: the annual subscription represents
£29.99 ÷ $19,300 × 100Protection for the whole family, for the price of a coffee
£59.99 a year for 4 people works out to $5 a month for the whole family (£59.99 ÷ 12) — the price of a coffee a month, split four ways. Your parents, often the most exposed to scammers (see protecting your parents from scams), are covered under the same subscription as you — and it's older adults who report the highest average losses of all.
To compare on a daily basis: the annual plan works out to about 8.2 cents a day (29.99 ÷ 365).
See also: if part of your family lives abroad, the scams that specifically target immigrant communities — and how Family mode protects both households.
If you're the one holding it all together — kids on one side, aging parents on the other — see why Family mode exists for exactly this position: the sandwich generation.
And that average loss is only the visible part: see what actually happens after a scam — uncertain reimbursement, paperwork, timelines, and the real odds of justice.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Egidio cost?
£29.99 per year, £59.99 per year for Family
mode (up to 4 people), or £89.99 as a one-time Lifetime payment. No monthly plan is currently
available in this market.
What is the average cost of a scam in the US?
It depends heavily on the
type of fraud. Across all internet crime complaints reported to the FBI in 2024, the average
reported loss was about $19,300. For victims aged 60 and older, that average climbs to about
$83,000.
How many people does Family mode cover?
4 people under a single
subscription, for £59.99 per year. How Family mode works →
Want to protect someone else too? Refer them for 7 free days, for both of you.