A fivefold increase in four years
The scenarios that work best
According to reports aggregated by the FTC and FBI, the most effective fraudulent texts consistently mimic the same types of senders: package-delivery companies, banks, toll operators, government agencies, recruiters, or even a simple "wrong number" that starts a conversation before drifting toward a request for money or a fake investment opportunity. The common thread: a scenario universal enough to work on anyone, with no prior targeting.
The message format is changing too
With RCS (Rich Communication Services) adopted by major smartphone makers in 2025, a fraudulent text can now display with a logo, polished formatting and an embedded link preview — a look far closer to a real business communication than a plain-text SMS. The same deceptive mechanism now comes with a far more convincing wrapper, without the underlying scenario changing at all.
Smishing
A blend of "SMS" and "phishing" — phishing carried out by text message rather than email.
RCS
Rich Communication Services: the successor to the classic SMS, enabling rich messages, read receipts and attachments — increasingly used, including by scammers.
Frequently asked questions
Has smishing really increased?
Yes, measurably: the FTC documented $470 million in losses linked to text scams in the United States in 2024, versus a fraction of that amount in 2020 — a fivefold increase in four years.
Why are package-delivery scenarios so common?
Because a message announcing a delivery problem creates believable urgency for almost anyone, without needing any prior personal information about the target — a universal scenario, and therefore profitable at scale.
Do new message formats (RCS) change things?
RCS allows messages with logos, formatting and link previews — a look far closer to a real business communication than a plain text message, which makes visual imitation harder to spot at a glance.
Other markets we cover
Text-based scams don't stay inside one country's borders — regulators and anti-fraud centres in other markets are tracking the same shift, with their own numbers.
🇦🇺Australia — SMS scam reports fell, then smishing volumes surged again
Reports of SMS scam contacts to Australia's National Anti-Scam Centre dropped from 77,365 in 2024 to 29,058 in 2025 after a wave of takedowns and telco blocking. But industry trackers reported smishing volumes rising again by roughly 30–40% quarter on quarter through late 2025 and into 2026 — the same delivery-scam and toll-fee scenarios reappearing at scale.
National Anti-Scam Centre, Targeting Scams Report 2025, March 2026.🇬🇧United Kingdom — 90 million scam-text reports in under a year
UK mobile users filed roughly 90 million reports to the free 7726 spam-text service between May 2024 and March 2025, and half of all UK mobile users said they'd received a suspicious text or iMessage in a four-month window. Mobile operators say they now block at least 600 million scam messages a year — evidence of both the scale of the problem and the scale of the response.
Ofcom, "Statement: Combatting mobile messaging scams," October 2025.🇨🇦Canada — official smishing reports are down, but investigators say that's misleading
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre logged 886 smishing reports in the first half of 2025, down from 2,546 for all of 2024 and 3,874 in 2023. The centre cautions the trend understates reality: it estimates only 5–10% of fraud victims ever file a report, while AI tools are making bulk, convincing smishing campaigns easier to run.
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, cited by CBC News, 2025.🇮🇳India — a national SMS filter blocking billions of messages a day
India's telecom regulator TRAI now runs SMS traffic through a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) system that blocks around 7.5 crore (75 million) spam and scam SMS and voice calls per day, and had disconnected 21 lakh (2.1 million) connections linked to spam as of December 2025. Families with members working abroad face their own version of these scenarios — see our dedicated page on diaspora scams.
TRAI enforcement data, cited by India TV News, March 2026.Go further
Egidio — The Threat Laboratory, "The evolution of smishing: from plain text to rich messaging", egidio.app/en/laboratoire/evolution-of-smishing/. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
Free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution. Reuse terms.