For compliance teams and anti-fraud professionals, the traditional approach to tracking scams—relying on post-incident loss databases and reported victim metrics—often feels like driving while looking exclusively in the rearview mirror. By the time a fraud typology registers in a loss report, the criminal syndicates behind it have usually pivoted to a new narrative.

In 2026, staying ahead requires predictive, behavior-driven early signals. Among the leading global indicators available today is the Civoryx Scam Trend Score. Rather than tracking money lost, it tracks human attention, functioning as a real-time behavioral barometer for the global fraud ecosystem.

Here is a deep dive into the latest keyword-by-keyword data from February 2026, revealing a stark shift in how bad actors are weaponizing mobile infrastructure to bypass modern security controls.

The Civoryx Methodology: Tracking the Shifts

To understand the insights, it helps to understand the engine. The Civoryx index does not look at police reports; it aggregates month-over-month search momentum across 150 highly specific, fraud-related queries.

Each keyword’s momentum is weighted by its absolute search volume. This produces a single composite score that reflects exactly where global fraud attention is concentrating at any given moment. To ensure the index remains relevant against rapidly mutating criminal tactics, Civoryx deliberately recalibrates its keyword weighting model every 90 days.

By the way, Civoryx has been tracking global fraud search behavior since 2019.

The February 2026 Snapshot: A Concentration of Threat

Analysis of the February 2026 keyword dataset reveals a highly concentrated threat signal. The index movement isn’t being driven by a broad, even spread of scams, but rather by a very tight, potent cluster of specific themes.

Top Contributors to the Civoryx Score (Largest Weighted Impact):

Fraud / Scam Theme	Weighted Contribution Score
Tax Fraud	75.74
EZ Pass Scams	57.94
Credit Card Fraud	21.36
Coinbase Text Scam	12.43
PayPal Scam Email	10.53
Toll Scam Text	9.51
Geek Squad Scam	7.83
DMV Scam Text	5.20
Visa Fraud	3.57
PayPal Email Scam	2.20

The Compliance Takeaway: This heavy concentration indicates that seasonal financial fraud (predictably, “tax fraud” dominating in late winter) and highly targeted impersonation campaigns are exerting the absolute strongest influence on global fraud attention right now. Fraudsters are relying on the anxiety of tax season and the everyday friction of automated billing to panic victims into compliance.

The Velocity Vector: Fastest-Growing Scam Themes

While the top contributors show us the sheer volume of attacks, looking at the fastest-growing queries reveals where criminal infrastructure is actively expanding. The dataset exposes an unusually sharp, aggressive month-over-month growth in infrastructure and payment-related scams.

Month-over-month growth spikes:

Fraud / Scam Theme	MoM Growth (%)
EZ Pass Scams	+5,685%
Toll Scam Text	+2,361%
DMV Scam Text	+1,291%
Coinbase Text Scam	+817%
Tax Fraud	+814%
Visa Fraud	+646%
Geek Squad Scam	+514%
Credit Card Fraud	+513%

The Compliance Takeaway: This is the most critical revelation in the February data. Look at the top three growth leaders: EZ Pass, Tolls, and the DMV. Together, these unprecedented spikes—some exceeding 5,000%—point to a massive, coordinated channel shift toward SMS-driven impersonation (smishing).

Fraudsters are weaponizing text messages pretending to be civic infrastructure. Why? Because text messages still carry a psychological weight of urgency and legitimacy that emails have largely lost. For risk and compliance teams, this pattern is a massive red flag indicating a need to urgently reassess customer-communication controls, update fraud alerting thresholds, and push out immediate consumer awareness warnings regarding SMS links.

The Cooling Off: Declining Fraud Attention

Just as important as knowing what is surging is recognizing what is fading out of the public consciousness. According to Civoryx, searches for broader, older, or more generic queries are currently in steep decline.

Declining Search Trends:

• Is this a scam: -55%
• Gift card scam: -46%
• McAfee scam: -45%
• Brushing scam: -19%
• Phishing: -18%

The Compliance Takeaway: This divergence—hyper-specific SMS scam types skyrocketing while generic awareness queries plummet—signals a highly narrative-driven fraud cycle. Consumers are no longer searching broadly to figure out if they are being phished; they are being hit with incredibly specific, localized threats (like a fake text about a specific local toll road) and are searching directly for that exact narrative. The days of generic “Nigerian Prince” spray-and-pray emails are being overshadowed by hyper-targeted, event-driven mobile attacks.

Moving Forward

The February 2026 Civoryx data paints a clear picture: we are in the midst of a massive spike in mobile-first, SMS-driven fraud that leverages civic and seasonal infrastructure to create artificial urgency. By utilizing behavioral indices rather than waiting for financial loss reports, organizations can pivot their defensive postures in real-time to meet these specific threats head-on.