Embarrassment is not the main reason people fail to report scams, according to a Heimdal survey of 1,884 UK adults who were targeted in the past 12 months. Only 7.2% of those who did not report cited it, fifth of the six reasons offered.
Overall, 42.7% did not tell their bank, the police or the website or app where the scam happened. The most common reason, given by 47.2%, was that they had not lost anything, so it did not seem to matter. 27.8% did not think reporting would make a difference and 20.5% did not know who to tell. Respondents could give more than one answer. Almost a quarter (24.4%) told only family or friends, and 17.4% told no one.
Losses changed the pattern. Of those who lost money, 11.7% did not report to their bank, the police or the platform, against 49.9% of people who lost nothing.
Adults aged 25 to 34 lost money most often, at 35.7% of those targeted, more than five times the rate for over-65s (6.8%). Calls impersonating a bank, the police or the government reached 60.5% of 18 to 24-year-olds who were targeted, against 36.0% of over-65s. People in full-time work lost money more often than others (23.7% against 11.9%), and in London 27.0% of those targeted lost money, against 16.8% across the rest of the UK.
Adam Pilton, cybersecurity adviser at Heimdal Security and a former detective sergeant in cybercrime at Dorset Police, said: "What I want to call out, as probably the most important piece of this report, is that four in 10 people don't report a scam." He said reports from the public feed investigations, because the same phone number or email address often turns up across separate scams.
Heimdal commissioned the survey and Pollfish ran it between 26 August and 4 October 2026. Heimdal ordered 2,000 responses but the London and East of England quotas were not filled, leaving 1,884. Most figures are weighted to ONS population estimates with a margin of error of up to 2.3 points, and the regional figures are unweighted.
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