If you feel like you’re being bombarded by scam calls on your smartphone or through other digital means, you’re not alone. Financial fraud and scams are getting rampant in India, with AI and deepfake fuelling the boom in scams being reported by Indian victims, according to McAfee.
Their assessment tracks with national numbers on scams prevalent in India right now. Data compiled by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) shows Indians lost Rs 19,813 crore to fraud and cheating cases in 2025. There were in total 21.77 lakh complaints on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, of which 77% were about losses based on fraudulent “investment” schemes.
Here’s what McAfee’s latest consumer survey claims about the state of scams in India. The survey was conducted in November 2025, with inputs from 7,592 adults across India and other nations. While McAfee didn’t reveal their sample size for India specifically, they are confident the responses are indicative of what’s playing out nationally on the ground – which is frankly scary, when you look at the numbers below.
According to McAfee’s latest report on rising scams, Indians receive an average of 13 scam messages a day. Not just that, but it’s taking a toll on people, too. Because McAfee says that Indians spend 102 hours a year separating real from fake – nearly three full workweeks.
Among people who reported being harmed or falling prey to scam messages, the typical scam played out in about 30 minutes or less. In the fastest hits, it took just 5 minutes to lose money or information. This just goes to show just how fast modern digital scams have become in India.
Also read: Gurugram man loses Rs 73 lakh in online investment scam: Here’s what happened
This is the most disheartening part of McAfee’s India findings, where their report says that over half of Indians (51%) say they’ve lost money due to a scam call or message, averaging a loss of ₹93,915 per victim.
With regards to deepfakes, McAfee says that Indians see 4 deepfakes per day. That’s not the most worrying part, but the fact that more than one in three aren’t confident they can spot a deepfake scam.
Thirteen scam messages a day is way too much for anyone to manage, even if they’re always vigilant, always careful online. Scam has in some ways become Indians’ daily digital diet.
And the time tax is real. 102 hours a year is time spent judging notifications instead of living your life. You’re not just deleting spam, you’re running background checks on your own inbox. This is mentally taxing!
Then there’s AI, the great deepfake accelerator. Indians see an average of four deepfakes a day, mixed into real content until the brain starts treating synthetic video like background noise.
The worst part about McAfee’s report is that getting scammed once doesn’t end it. Among those who lost money, 24% were targeted again within a year – because to scammers, victims are not just victims, they have now become leads to be tapped in future.
Here McAfee makes some recommendations. First and foremost, it’s about treating anything that looks normal with suspicion automatically. Surprise verification requests and urgent messages asking you to act impulsively on something deserve a serious pause, so you can assess and think through the situation. If nearly 9 in 10 Indians have encountered a suspicious QR code, assume every random code is guilty until proven otherwise.
And for deepfakes and voice-clones, verification has to be boring – there’s no other shortcut to save yourself from these new impersonation scams. Hang up on a call if you smell a rat, call back on a known number, and ask a question only the real person would answer. If scammers thrive on speed, your best weapon is friction and slowing down the process.
In 2026, the scam isn’t always the message. Sometimes it’s the feeling the message creates – fear, greed, FOMO – delivered 13 times a day. Stay safe out there.
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