There’s literally thousands of Indian call center scammers that are fleecing people of money purely be convincing them that they’re fixing their computer when they’re doing nothing or that they’re due a refund but got too much money and need to pay some back.
Or there’s the IRS scammers who call you and tell you that you owe taxes.
Most of these involve really pathetic attempts at impersonation and the only reason people fall for it is ignorance.
So con artists are by no means dead and YouTube is full of channels where con artists con the scammers.
It is not just the elderly who can be victimized. These callers use sophisticated scripts to scare people, engaging the fight-or-flight reflex. Once you feel profoundly threatened, parts of your brain physically shut down, quickly making you far dumber and more easily manipulated by somebody promising to save you.
Plenty of smart, young engineers have fallen for phishing scams with similar structures. The elderly and ignorant are especially vulnerable, but every single one of us, without exception, is vulnerable to being conned.
We'll usually agree afterwards that it could have been easy to see from the right perspective. Hindsight blinds us to the reasons people are vulnerable in the first place.
Right. I recently experienced this, when I got an Email from Amex that there had been a suspicious transaction on my card and asking me to confirm it and call them if I hadn't made it. Since it was a 460 EUR charge from some online wine shop in Spain, I did call the number in the email and only when I was in the middle of telling them my card details (including CVC, of course) I realized that I could be talking to a scammer, so I stalled a little and googled the number, confirming that it was indeed a legit Amex support number.
Companies really should design their procedures more to not look like social engineering...
I just received a scam call a few minutes ago; your social security number has been "suspended." Call us immediately.
I think of all the elderly these people are terrifying and my civility slips a bit. Kitboga is great and all but that's not a solution.
> the only reason people fall for it is ignorance
That's not correct. Mental faculties deteriorate with age; mindful people that would never have fallen for this nonsense become vulnerable every day. Ultimately no amount of 'education' can fix that. That's what these scammers are really preying on.
Things like this make me think there might be value in an "elderly mode" on phones wherein the phone only accepts inbound calls from numbers that the user has made outbound calls to in the past. Businesses you haven't called yourself would have to use the postage system instead, which seems like a positive improvement. Of course, such a system would not necessarily be worth much until the number spoofing problem has been resolved. Two phones both in elderly mode could whitelist each other using NFC perhaps.
(Maybe that's not a great name for it. In truth, I think I would use this elderly-mode too.)
>> the only reason people fall for it is ignorance
> That's not correct. Mental faculties deteriorate with age; mindful people that would never have fallen for this nonsense become vulnerable every day. Ultimately no amount of 'education' can fix that. That's what these scammers are really preying on.
On this analysis, the problem could be solved by organizing society into large family groups instead of a bunch of small independent households. When "the family finances" are a thing and several different people can see them, this is a pretty unlikely failure mode.
You can achieve something similar in the US, but first you have to notice the problem and then you have to have the victim legally declared mentally incompetent.
This assumes that families are always safe and trustworthy, and that every individual is content with sharing their life details with their family. We're moving away from the model you propose because that assumption is not universally true.
That said, many banks (at least in EU) already offer shared accounts or multiple-reader accounts to consumers, though multiple person transaction sign-off is reserved for business accounts.
I think I prefer our largely clan free 'society.' The vast bulk of these scammers are the dregs of our species and could be effectively thwarted with fairly simple policies. Limiting gift cards to domestic redemption, for example. No need to re-engineer everything around some sociologic noble savage fantasy.
There are also "multi-level marketting" pyramid schemes and high pressure timeshare salesmen still out there. The difference between an outright conman and a high-pressure salesman seems marginal at best.
Fun fact: the second largest industry in Utah (after tourism) are pyramid schemes. They do billions in revenue. It’s also the center of the entirely unregulated bogus, vitamin/supplement industry.
So not only are conmen alive and well, they’re a primary industry in at least one US state.
Don't forget that the entire boom in supplements/vitamins in the industry is the result of Orrin Hatch, who sold snake oil door to door to put himself through college, and then as Senator, succeeded in getting supplements declared as neither a Food nor Drug, so the FDA essentially couldn't regulate them.
I think it's fare to say that Orrin Hatch's career has resulted in millions of people being fleeced by quack snake oil, and some non-trivial number of people's health harmed.
It is insane that an entire state is actually happy to be a save haven for this trash instead of cracking down on it. It isn't like they don't know either, there are more than enough stories out there on the dangers and negative effects of MLMs (both financial but also health-wise since the MLM paddlers will often make bogus health claims related to the scams they're hawking) for anyone in power to know these are bad and should be regulated out of existence.
That is the problem with provincial or local level government - they are effectively encouraged to go with antisocial options like that and guard them because it localizes benefits.
One virtue of a centralized system is that their incentives are to stop this parasitic crap because the systemic costs are greater.
Utah is sort of like an American Australia, but populated by a single criminal and his cult followers who fled other states. The state is run by members of the cult.
This is why I just ignore unknown contacts unless I’m expecting a call at the time.
And rule of thumb: the government doesn’t call anyone for tax stuff.
They can send the police or tax auditors to find me in person if there’s a real fucking problem. Hopefully, I’d get certified mail before that happens.
Or there’s the IRS scammers who call you and tell you that you owe taxes.
Most of these involve really pathetic attempts at impersonation and the only reason people fall for it is ignorance.
So con artists are by no means dead and YouTube is full of channels where con artists con the scammers.
IRLRosie and Kitboga in particular are hilarious.