Today, Consumer Reports, Aspen Digital, and the Global Cyber Alliance released the fourth annual Consumer Cyber Readiness report. The report highlights findings from two nationally representative surveys of over 2,000 US adults conducted by CR in April 2025 and May 2025.
This year, we saw a decrease in consumer confidence that their personal data is private and not distributed without their knowledge. We continue to see a racial disparity in money lost due to scams: Black Americans who encounter scams were nearly two and a half times as likely as white Americans to report losing money. This year, we note a financial disparity as well, with Americans with the highest household incomes being less likely to have lost money to a digital scam than those in other household income groups. Of particular interest this year is the rise in text and messaging-based scam attempts, particularly impacting young adults.
We did see some improvement in actions consumers take to improve their security posture: the use of password managers, browser extensions that block trackers, and file encryption software have all increased. For the first time this year, we looked at the use of passkeys, and found that a third of Americans who use multifactor authentication report using passkeys.
In addition to our year-over-year trends on cybersecurity behavior, consumer scams, and their attack vectors, we’ve provided explainers, consumer guidance, and perspectives from thought leaders to contextualize the insights from our findings.
- Read the full report
- Explore the CR Media Room
- Read the CR Article on Consumer Readiness Report findings
