We all like to think we are smart, independent, in full control of our lives, and there is no way any of us would fall for a financial scam, like those lonely old seniors do, because “that happens to them, not to me, because I am smart.”
But the truth is, even smart people fall for it, people with master degrees, people who work in academia, people running large business… Even I could fall for this.
And how did you learn to recognize it?
My 78 year old uncle feel for an Eastern European woman after his wife passed from COVID in 2021. It started with just chatting online with her, she was a real person, he talked with her on Facetime, this was before AI was so rampant.
Then it progressed to him sending her small amount of money, like 50-100 here and there, not frequently enough for anyone to notice and he didn’t mention it at first. Then it progressed to larger amounts of money, but less frequently. At this point the family was catching on and once his son figured out what was going on, he had been scammed out of just over 50,000.
His son now has full financial power of attorney and that scammer can’t get anymore money. My uncle unfortunately has pretty bad dementia now and he does not remember losing that money.
A relative was caught out recently. They pretended to be the bank. I missed the beginning, but what I heard sounded extremely professional, and exactly like a bank employee. It was only when they seemed confused I paid more attention. I jumped in rapidly when they gave them a code they got via text. By that point they had practically forgotten that the scammer called them, not them calling the bank.
I immediately put a stop to it. Even when ending the call, they were calm and professional. I told them that we needed to call them back on a confirmed number. And got a bunch of details in case it was real. I still wasn’t sure at that point if it was actually a scam or just our bank having a REALLY bad procedure.
Long story short, it was a scam, and the bank confirmed it. I don’t know if they managed to cancel the gift cards in time. However it was a credit card, so that was between the bank and the supermarket who sold them.
I personally wouldn’t have fallen for that one. I’ve got a bunch of mental “hell no” filters. Outside of those however, it was more professional than the conversation with the bank’s actual fraud department.
Back before my nan was moved into permanent care for her dementia, she kept falling victim to these mail order scams. Heaps and heaps of junk mail would land on her doormat every day offering real products that were often delivered, but were either awful quality dropshipped crap (clothes or plastic junk) or something she could buy in the corner shop down the road for 10% of the price (one that stands out that I remember is a pack of 4 mini apple tarts that cost like £29.99)
Of course the more she bought, the more junk mail she got, and I remember my dad bringing home multiple bin bags of these letters every week that he had confiscated from her before she could mail them back. Her kitchen counters were piled up with these forms every time we visited and it was so difficult to get rid of them because she would get angry if anyone “stole her post”.
At a certain age, you have to watch what they are looking at like they were your teenage kid. It is sad to say because they can fall for anything.
My dad l, who worked in tech / IT his whole life (retired now) l, had a problem with his ISP. Called to report it and the next day they called him back, got him to install ‘remote support software’, etc. He eventually saw what they were up to and pulled the plug. Turned out 2 guys at the ISP were selling support tickets to the scammers.
So the expectation was there—who knows how many people they got before they were found.
I’m not even sure I’d qualify that as a scam as much as it is outright theft. Almost like if your bank just started taking money from you. While the scammers weren’t from the ISP, if they were sent the info there is no real way to differentiate.
Exactly—could easily have been much worse, and anyone without at least a little IT knowledge might not have realised. Kind of shows the lengths they’ll go to now, getting employed at targets etc.
My Mom had a close call. She got an Email “thanking” her for her “purchase”. The amount was ~$500. The Email helpfully included a customer service line to get a refund. Once called, the “customer service” rep tried to get her to install remote-desktop software.
Of course there was no original $500 purchase. The whole point of the scam is to make the target upset that they’ve been charged and get so laser focused on the refund that they don’t question the process.
When you say even smart people fall for it I can’t help but think that both George Shultz and Henry Kissinger were on the board of Theranos.
One of my best friends moms said she knew the guy and it seemed like a legit investment thing. This lady was the CIO of a fortune 100 company so at the time I felt like surely she knew what she was talking about. She did not. She was honestly one of the most financially ignorant people I’ve ever known. Fortunately it was just a few grand.
I’ve had a number of people in my life fall for scams. Its all about people exploiting trust. Victims trusted that what they were saying was true, they didn’t question what was happening enough, and their tactics are designed to stress you out so that you don’t question when they offer you a quick solution.
I believe that everyone needs to be exposed to this betrayal in some way to learn to recognize it. The mechanic that charges you too much for a repair, the person in a game that scams you out of items, the phishing email that needs you to buy gift cards.
Talk about scams with others, learn from the stories you hear, and be skeptical when someone presents both the problem and solution.
Scams almost always start by fulfilling something the scammed person is lacking. Long cons might start out as a person being friendly with a lonely old person. Quick cons usually prey on immediate financial needs.
But how you identify cons is usually by being skeptical of everyone’s motivations. You test it by twisting what they want and seeing how they react.
Example: I was selling a car that was just a couple years old. I have a buyer basically agree that everything’s good, they’re ready to buy, just need a carfax report. They claim carfax isn’t reliable but this other report company is who they trust. I buy the report and share it with them, and when it’s clean as I know it will be, they’ll be here the next day with cash. I researched the company a bit and it seemed legit, and I figure the report will help me sell to others as well, so I buy it and the person ghosts me. I research a bit more and while technically the company is legit, they pay referrals to people to sell reports. I immediately contacted them and got a refund, luckily.
Next time I’m selling a car, same thing happens. So I tell them to buy the report themselves and I’ll deduct it from the cost of the vehicle. To keep staking time from them I think I even offered them to buy the report themselves and I’ll deduct 5x the cost from the selling price.
So they were fulfilling my need by buying my car. They made a request that seemed reasonable. My twist that would effectively fulfill the request but by different means was met with arguments. Makes it more obvious that they were never going to fulfill my need.
In the case of someone being friendly to an elderly person. Maybe that person works in a care facility the elder is staring at. Eventually they ask for something. Maybe they’re “short $500 to deal with this painful root canal” and subtly asking for cash. If the elder wants to help, but wants to test, they could offer to come to the dentist with them and swipe their card to pay. All of the sudden that root canal is being handled by a dentist that only takes cash, which is obvious bullshit.
Be skeptical of any new people, even if you like and trust them, and if unlimited to help them in some way find ways of helping them that disrupts their plan to see how they react.
Damn that referral one is scummy!!!
I don’t know it is protection enough, but my golden rule is that if something is too good to be true it is usually a scam.
Easy way to make money? Probably a scam. Unbelievably attractive and rich person is into you? Probably a scam.
Etc. etc.
Found out the other day that my aunt responded to one of the phishing scams where they send you a bill and a line for customer support.
She called and allowed them take control of her PC.
A scammer almost got me recently, saying they were calling from the fraud department of my credit card company. I started talking to them until I remembered I had closed that specific account years ago. It was convincing up until that point. When I questioned it, the caller became irate and said “oh yeah, well if I’m a scammer, how do I have your address???”. She read it off, and it was a place I’d moved from years ago as well.
I was “scammed”: my company sent a phishing email to warn people about scams. I learned never to click links in emails unless you know the sender and that your stored passwords are inserted only when the url is 100% correct. If you don’t get the autocomplete option, the URL might be wrong and it’s a trap
My company does random phishing trials to keep people alert. They collect statistics on how many people click the link and how many report it as a scam.
Fortunately the test mails they send out include a specific header indicating it’s a phishing test, so I just set up a rule in my mail app to automatically move those to a specific mailbox and alert me they’re running another test.
Your rule does kind of defeat the purpose. The goal is to see if you can detect phishing attempts “in the wild”. We all want to claim we never fail at detecting stuff, but we do, so training against it is good practice, even if annoying
We had this, and I created the same rule, but they have since switched to AI generated phishing emails that use information about you (your manager etc) to make a fairly convincing email. If someone gets a lot of email from outside sources, I can totally see them clicking on a link if they’re in a hurry.
The main things that raise my suspicion are:
- telling me it’s urgent
- telling me there will be dire consequences if I fail to comply
- asking me to log in (with a direct link)
- it’s from an external source
- it’s not related to my job (eg, asking me to sign off on a PO)
- telling me to download a file
- including an attachment
I usually just err on the side of reporting it. I’ve only had one false positive so far.
Then there’s also legitimate mail that contain all those red flags.
The same people that made us go through anti-phishimg training sent me an e-mail that read exactly like a phishing attempt net even a week later, which turned out to be totally legit. Like, WTF.
Then there’s also legitimate mail that contain all those red flags.
Thanks, FedEx!
Yep lol. They have a second system that rewrites all links in emails to go through a scanner, but as a side effect that obfuscates them as well.
I got some of those! If ai hadn’t personally known the sender, I would have reported them…
And how did you learn to recognize it?
I would imagine watching scam baiter videos (e.g. Kitboga) and reading scam related news introduces one to know the most common scams.
Of course there can be other/new types of scams, but removing the common scams from the effective ones should be at least beneficial.
