Stephen Dubner

That's just like a spammy email alert.

Right.

Would this piano email that I got rise to the level of being reportable to the FTC?

OK, so let's hear from someone at the FTC.

Actually, Daffin left government recently after our interview to start her own consumer protection firm.

Anyway, the FTC began actively targeting scams in the 1960s and 70s during the consumer protection movement.

Those were the days of chain letters and sweepstakes fraud.

In the 1990s, as part of what was called Project Telesweep, the FTC started collecting data on telemarketing fraud.

Today, it collects data on scams of all types and works with other government agencies to find and prosecute scammers.

Last year, there was a 25% increase in scam theft compared to the year before.

So how much money is being scammed?

The FTC compiles a variety of data sets from complaints they receive directly, also from the Better Business Bureau and from state attorneys general and so on.

They also try to account for under-reporting.

And here's Marty DeLima again.

I'm really glad you bring that up.

That was something that drew me to this idea in the first place.

Because my feeling is that if you have to read every single email you get or answer every phone call or judge any in-person meeting,

through this filter of I may be being taken advantage of in some way, I mean, my reaction is just to say, well, I don't want to read any emails or get any phone calls or meet anybody.

And when we look at the data in the U.S.

in what's called social trust over the past 40 or 50 years, it really has declined a great deal.