Fraud is getting harder to tell apart from ordinary digital activity. AI-generated scams are blending into social feeds and messaging apps, while high-volume events like the World Cup and the holiday season give attacks more traffic to hide within. Sift’s Q3 2026 Digital Trust Index combines a consumer survey with data from the Sift Global Data Network to show where fraud concentrates, how it shifts across industries, and why the way a company responds to an incident matters as much as the incident itself.
- 53% of consumers have encountered a scam using AI-generated images or video on social media or a messaging app, but only 36% feel confident they could spot one
- A six-week anomaly study across nine merchants found 129 critical anomalies, 82% tied to BIN attacks spanning 58 distinct card ranges
- iGaming’s payment fraud attack rate rose almost 9x year over year ahead of the World Cup, while Travel & Ticketing’s fell 67% in the same period
- Average order value climbed 52% year over year to $128, meaning the same attack rate can carry very different loss exposure by industry
- 58% of consumers say a large-scale fraud attack decreases their trust in a company, and a clear explanation is the strongest lever for keeping it
