The Federal Trade Commission is asking whether online platforms should be required to stop impersonation ads before they ever reach a user. The question comes in an advance notice of proposed rulemaking approved 2-0 on Sept. 24, and it follows a year in which Americans filed more than a million imposter scam reports with the agency. The notice is a request for public comment. It is not a rule, and nothing in it requires any platform to do anything today.
Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson’s commission voted unanimously to put the question to the public, according to the agency’s announcement. The release does not name the second voting commissioner, so none is named here. What the release does do is lay out the scale of the problem that prompted the step.
What the 2025 numbers say
In its announcement of the notice, the FTC reported more than 1 million imposter scam reports for 2025. Reported losses to impersonation fraud came to roughly $3.5 billion that year. The agency attributes nearly $2.1 billion of those losses to scams that began on social media, and says nearly 30% of scammer contacts started there.
Those are reported figures. The FTC’s own director of consumer protection says the true cost is probably higher. The count is also a tally of reports, not of separate victims or separate scam operations.
What the notice asks about platforms
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, framed the move around trust. “Impersonation scams, especially when amplified by digital platforms that profit from them, do more than rob Americans of their hard-earned money,” he said. He added that the notice “asks whether the Commission should require platforms to take concrete steps to prevent impersonation ads from ever reaching consumers.”
That is the heart of it: a question. The notice concerns the FTC’s Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses, and it asks the public what, if anything, the Commission should add to that rule where platforms are concerned. The topics it raises include:
- the financial incentives and ad-optimization mechanisms that may affect which ads platforms run;
- whether certain platform tools or practices amount to unfair or deceptive practices;
- how common impersonation ads are in the marketplace, and which regulatory approach fits;
- specific measures, including vetting advertisers, monitoring ads, investigating suspected scam ads, removing confirmed impersonation ads and disciplining the advertisers behind them.
An advance notice of this kind sits at the earliest stage of the rulemaking process. It collects views and evidence. Whether it leads to a formal proposal, and what such a proposal would contain, is undecided, and no platform obligation exists unless and until the Commission adopts one through a later process.
The comment clock has not started
Comments are due 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. As of the FTC’s announcement, that publication had not yet occurred, so there is no fixed calendar deadline to report. The FTC keeps the notice and its text on its Federal Register notices page for the impersonation rule, which is where the date will appear once publication happens.
For ordinary households, the practical effect for now is limited. Nothing changes in how ads are screened because of this notice. What it signals is that the agency is weighing whether the responsibility for catching impersonation ads should shift toward the platforms that sell the advertising space.
Why the money angle is so large
The size of the reported losses explains the agency’s interest. A $3.5 billion total, spread across more than a million reports, means these are not rare events. Impersonators pose as government agencies and as businesses people already know, and an ad that carries a familiar name can look like the real thing. The FTC’s figure that $2.1 billion in losses traced back to social media contacts shows how much of that harm starts with something a person simply scrolls past.
Mufarrige’s remark that the real cost is probably far higher is worth keeping in view when reading any of these totals. They describe what was reported to one agency in one year, and the notice itself is the agency’s way of asking how much of that could be stopped before an ad is ever displayed.
Impersonation ads and the data that feeds them
Whatever the FTC decides about ads, scam calls, texts and emails still find people through phone numbers, home addresses and profiles that sit on data-broker and people-search sites. Incogni files removal requests with those brokers and people-search sites for a subscriber, keeps re-filing them as records reappear, and shows the state of every request in the account. Thinner broker listings can mean fewer scam calls, texts and emails reaching a household in the first place.
Tap here to see how Incogni sends removal requests to data brokers → We may earn a commission if you buy through this link.
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the primary sources linked above.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
