Akamai: Online Scams Double to 6.4M, Overtake Phishing as Attack Windows Shrink to 22 Days
shashib · x · 2026-10-30
Akamai's State of the Internet report, released October 29 with data from Bolster AI, finds:
- Scams overtake phishing: Q1 2026 online scam detections roughly doubled from 3.2M to 6.4M, passing traditional phishing for the first time.
- Phishing still growing: traditional phishing grew 61% by Q2.
- Shrinking attack windows: average phishing campaign duration fell from 48.3 days in Q4 2025 to 22 days in Q2 2026, with attackers swapping fake sites roughly every three weeks.
- Login risk: 26.6% of logins were rated high or critical risk, and 40% of risky logins were account checks.
The author notes AI makes phishing far more sophisticated and personalized, since public data lets attackers tailor lures cheaply, and voice AI lowers the bar further. The report urges security teams to work with customer-facing business and marketing teams and to watch the shared back ends behind fake sites.
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