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>"targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually" In this case, the scammers to

>"targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually" In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad. But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe, when the internet was young and this was new. But it's a pop culture joke now. Those numbers are staggering.

jpmoral 11y ago
Different people are vulnerable to different things. There are different kinds of scams, targeting (among other things) desperation, greed, loneliness, insecurity, and even altruism. No one is 100% rational 100% of the time.
welly 11y ago
It's a pop culture joke among those who are regular internet users. There are a whole bunch of people who use the internet infrequently and don't hear or know about these scams.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Pop culture joke? Among the young, maybe. Perhaps not among the elderly.
ksherlock 11y ago
Why do people fall for the "work for a startup and get rich" scam?
- hueving 11y ago
  Probably because some people get rich. Also, many people appropriately view the options as a lottery ticket and just like to be in a company building something new.
- linkydinkandyou 11y ago
  This is probably the best comment in the whole thread. In fact, you can't get "rich" unless you're a founder in a startup. (And no, this isn't sour grapes! I've made money in Silicon Valley, and continue to work at age 53 in a new startup.)
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Or the 'try to play the markets and get rich' scam? I've seen many elderly individuals playing the markets with far too little knowledge of how they work, thinking they can win.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > Why do people fall for the "work for a startup and get rich" scam? In all fairness, just like the phone scams, people are warned the best they can be about start-up lottery tickets.
compbio 11y ago
It's a game of numbers. Even if the response rate to spam email is like 0.00001%, it is still economically viable to send out 10 million spam emails. Scammer groups that have survived for this long got to hone their skills of manipulation and persuasion (and have the money to continue operations). We are all to a degree vulnerable to persuasion, and it used by scammers, but also businesses: "Temporarily free version of Microsoft 10. Get yours now! It's easy. 10 million people have already upgraded." Older people have trusted phones for all their lives. They are more vulnerable to these than email scams. Locally there is now a scam involving people who dress up as home care, visit one hour before the real home care person, tell them they are the new replacement, then proceed to ransack the place for valuables. I could see myself falling victim to that. They played on this old man's hope and financial worries ("greed" in less positive terms). Stories like these gravely sadden me. Hits close to home too: Both my father and mother were targeted, one over email (cloud backup scam), the other over the phone (helpdesk scam). I hope to build a product in the future to help combat these online and offline scams.
tluyben2 11y ago
One person in the story was actually threatened: I assume that happens quite a lot. Just say 'something' to threaten an old person her/his children... Hell, say that to young people; they will get scared but are less likely to take action on it I guess.
admax88q 11y ago
Same way people get addicted to gambling.
thehoff 11y ago
Where I work we have gotten emails claiming to be from IT, after constant reminders on what an official email would look like and how to spot a fake and to never click on links. Apparently some have fallen for it. While not lottery scams you would think that in a work environment where there is constant education on what to look out for it still happens. I wouldn't attribute it to stupidity. Just getting caught at the right moment.
andyjohnson0 11y ago
"How on earth do "normal" people fall for this?" They don't have to convince everybody, just enough people to make it worthwhile. With third-world wages and cheap internet telephony, that number is surprisingly small. Some (but not many) people are just lonely/trusting/deluded.
nadams 11y ago
> How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? How do people fall for phishing scams or running malware from an email attachment? The answer to that question is the same to yours. I think it's a combination of lack of public education about scams and the belief that the email or phone call is legit. And I think it's really interesting. A lot of people talk about "infected" PDFs - I've personally never seen that but what I usually see are: invoice.pdf.exe invoice.pdf.js Most sane email providers should scrub that attachment (or bounce it) - however email providers such as AOL don't. Thanks AOL. I run my own email service and I get emails like these all the time [1]. And if you are someone who takes the tollway daily it could be a scary email that you open right away. I do want to mention Amazon's practices. So it appears their system glitches and spews out this email to random people [2]. This email is plain text and, at least the last time I logged into my account, has no indication that they want this information (it does say that "functionality is limited" but those instructions that say to login to the site and submit your information are incorrect which immediately makes me think it's a scam - it even has typos that you would find on a scam email!). It's even been reported that customer service says that it is a scam. However, it is real and an easy template to scam people out of their identity. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee at starbucks you can get an 800 number from a VOIP provider with faxing ability. I've contacted Amazon about it....and they just sent me the same email back. Thanks Amazon. (You don't know how tempted I am to write a cron job that faxes a copy of my drivers license to them every hour) [1] http://i.imgur.com/GH46n92.png http://i.imgur.com/GH46n92.png [2] https://gist.github.com/nadams810/cb1a85514484c2659f1b https://gist.github.com/nadams810/cb1a85514484c2659f1b

jpmoral 11y ago

Different people are vulnerable to different things. There are different kinds of scams, targeting (among other things) desperation, greed, loneliness, insecurity, and even altruism. No one is 100% rational 100% of the time.

welly 11y ago

It's a pop culture joke among those who are regular internet users. There are a whole bunch of people who use the internet infrequently and don't hear or know about these scams.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

Pop culture joke? Among the young, maybe. Perhaps not among the elderly.

ksherlock 11y ago

Why do people fall for the "work for a startup and get rich" scam?

hueving 11y ago
Probably because some people get rich. Also, many people appropriately view the options as a lottery ticket and just like to be in a company building something new.
linkydinkandyou 11y ago
This is probably the best comment in the whole thread. In fact, you can't get "rich" unless you're a founder in a startup. (And no, this isn't sour grapes! I've made money in Silicon Valley, and continue to work at age 53 in a new startup.)
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Or the 'try to play the markets and get rich' scam? I've seen many elderly individuals playing the markets with far too little knowledge of how they work, thinking they can win.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> Why do people fall for the "work for a startup and get rich" scam? In all fairness, just like the phone scams, people are warned the best they can be about start-up lottery tickets.

compbio 11y ago

It's a game of numbers. Even if the response rate to spam email is like 0.00001%, it is still economically viable to send out 10 million spam emails. Scammer groups that have survived for this long got to hone their skills of manipulation and persuasion (and have the money to continue operations). We are all to a degree vulnerable to persuasion, and it used by scammers, but also businesses: "Temporarily free version of Microsoft 10. Get yours now! It's easy. 10 million people have already upgraded." Older people have trusted phones for all their lives. They are more vulnerable to these than email scams. Locally there is now a scam involving people who dress up as home care, visit one hour before the real home care person, tell them they are the new replacement, then proceed to ransack the place for valuables. I could see myself falling victim to that. They played on this old man's hope and financial worries ("greed" in less positive terms). Stories like these gravely sadden me. Hits close to home too: Both my father and mother were targeted, one over email (cloud backup scam), the other over the phone (helpdesk scam). I hope to build a product in the future to help combat these online and offline scams.

tluyben2 11y ago

One person in the story was actually threatened: I assume that happens quite a lot. Just say 'something' to threaten an old person her/his children... Hell, say that to young people; they will get scared but are less likely to take action on it I guess.

admax88q 11y ago

Same way people get addicted to gambling.

thehoff 11y ago

Where I work we have gotten emails claiming to be from IT, after constant reminders on what an official email would look like and how to spot a fake and to never click on links. Apparently some have fallen for it. While not lottery scams you would think that in a work environment where there is constant education on what to look out for it still happens. I wouldn't attribute it to stupidity. Just getting caught at the right moment.

andyjohnson0 11y ago

"How on earth do "normal" people fall for this?" They don't have to convince everybody, just enough people to make it worthwhile. With third-world wages and cheap internet telephony, that number is surprisingly small. Some (but not many) people are just lonely/trusting/deluded.

nadams 11y ago

> How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? How do people fall for phishing scams or running malware from an email attachment? The answer to that question is the same to yours. I think it's a combination of lack of public education about scams and the belief that the email or phone call is legit. And I think it's really interesting. A lot of people talk about "infected" PDFs - I've personally never seen that but what I usually see are: invoice.pdf.exe invoice.pdf.js Most sane email providers should scrub that attachment (or bounce it) - however email providers such as AOL don't. Thanks AOL. I run my own email service and I get emails like these all the time [1]. And if you are someone who takes the tollway daily it could be a scary email that you open right away. I do want to mention Amazon's practices. So it appears their system glitches and spews out this email to random people [2]. This email is plain text and, at least the last time I logged into my account, has no indication that they want this information (it does say that "functionality is limited" but those instructions that say to login to the site and submit your information are incorrect which immediately makes me think it's a scam - it even has typos that you would find on a scam email!). It's even been reported that customer service says that it is a scam. However, it is real and an easy template to scam people out of their identity. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee at starbucks you can get an 800 number from a VOIP provider with faxing ability. I've contacted Amazon about it....and they just sent me the same email back. Thanks Amazon. (You don't know how tempted I am to write a cron job that faxes a copy of my drivers license to them every hour) [1] http://i.imgur.com/GH46n92.png http://i.imgur.com/GH46n92.png [2] https://gist.github.com/nadams810/cb1a85514484c2659f1b https://gist.github.com/nadams810/cb1a85514484c2659f1b