I wasn’t surprised to see identity theft ranked as the top source of consumer complaints in a recent national report. What did surprise me was that attempted fraud was more likely to occur by phone than online.

Phone calls were the source of about 54 percent of all fraud attempts reported last year through the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network, the agency revealed last month in its annual report.

Only 23 percent of all reported fraud occurred by e-mail.

That’s a reversal of what authorities saw only two years ago, when fraud was slightly more likely to be initiated by e-mail than phone.

There could be a few reasons for this. If you’ve got a good spam blocker on your e-mail, you’re less likely to see the scam e-mails sent your way.

Another factor is that the crooks who cook up these schemes often target older folks, and many older folks don’t use e-mail. But they’re still tied to their phones.

The data show a trend toward phone fraud. In 2012, 34 percent of fraud was reported that way. That grew to 41 percent in 2013 and to 54 percent last year.

E-mail fraud attempts trended in the opposite direction, making up 37 percent of fraud attempts in 2012, 32 percent in 2013 and 23 percent last year.

Popular phone scams include IRS impostors trying to trick you into thinking you owe back taxes; utility shut-off scams threatening to cut your power if you don’t pay your supposedly overdue bill over the phone; and the dreaded Microsoft scam where callers who impersonate technology companies try to make you believe there’s something wrong with your computer that you need to fix immediately, by paying them.

Last month’s annual consumer complaint report also listed the top categories of complaints. Here is the list:

Identity Theft (332,646, 13 percent)

Debt Collection (280,998, 11 percent)

Impostor Scams (276,662, 11 percent)

Telephone and Mobile Services (171,809, 7 percent)

Banks and Lenders (128,107, 5 percent)

Prizes, Sweepstakes and Lotteries (103,579, 4 percent).