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Americans lose $50M to phone scams in the last year

49 points by elorant 7y ago

jagger27 7y ago
That’s not a staggering number, to be honest.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Agreed, it's lower than I expected. But I've heard multiple stories of people being scammed for large sums of money over the phone and they tell nobody outside their immediate family. It goes unreported. They're too embarrassed.
B_Throwaway 7y ago
Alternative headline: Americans lose on average 16 cents to phone scams in the last year.
- stubish 7y ago
  Yes, you can play with statistics that way if you want to sweep the problem under the carpet. If only the victims could get their potentially life changing losses amortized over the country's population somehow.
  - pryffwyd 7y ago
    Chicago citizens were on average murdered .0002 times in the last year
- incompatible 7y ago
  It seems remarkably low, especially since it's supposedly the victims reporting to the FBI "some sort of phishing scam", (just phone scams, or including email etc?) "A whopping 26,379 people." Australians are expected to report over $532 million (AUD) in losses in 2019: https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/record-losses-expected-as-scammers-target-australians https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/record-losses-expected-as-...
grandmczeb 7y ago
Note this is reported scams. In some cases the victims may never even realize they’ve been scammed, and even those who do are frequently too embarrassed to talk about it openly. Many victims are also very old or recent immigrants and may not know how to report the scam. There are even scams that specifically target undocumented workers who may not want to report for fear of bringing unwanted attention to them by the government. I personally know half a dozen separate people who were either a victim or very nearly a victim of phone scams, so I have a very hard time believing the number isn’t much higher.
mcrae 7y ago
My girlfriend was speaking to her father (mid-60s?) who was complaining about what a pain in the ass it was to get his new iPhone configured. He had called Apple support who would come the next day, but now he had to go to Wal-Mart to pickup the giftcards to pay for the service. Wait. What? So I guess he had Googled for iPhone support and got some bogus phone number. Aside from the potential monetary loss, the scary part was that had they come to the house, he likely would have let them in. The world and the way in which we do business changes quickly, and red-flags for some aren't red-flags for others. But I'm really curious what search term lead to the fraudulent phone number in the first place -- how are these platforms so gameable?
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  No data to back this up, but at least in my experience victims finding a phone number directly from a Google search is actually pretty uncommon. Although, sometimes you’ll see fake numbers posted in the comments of news articles or YouTube videos that rank highly for search terms like “fix virus iPhone.” The most common way people get targeted is either via a pop-up while browsing (e.g. “Your iPhone has a virus! Call xxx xxxx now to fix”) or just random cold calls. Scammers also circulate lists of phone numbers/personal information of victims to previous scams, so once you end up as a victim of one you’re much more likely to be a target for new/more sophisticated scams.
  - herenorthere 7y ago
    Probably not the norm, but I have worked alongside a tech company that has 30+ million user accounts, and as such, has a pretty much constant stream of scammers wishing to take advantage of our user base. The customer support dept. has a phone number to call, which is listed on the website. But you'd be amazed how many people are willing to call some random number so long as it shows up in a google result. Normally, it's older folks that fall for this type of scam. The fraud dept. sends a handful of take-down requests to google per week; but it really doesn't do much to stem the incoming flow of support hotline scams. Once a number is taken down, they just create a new website and new fake number. To reply to your comment more directly, I have no idea whether or not this scam type accounts for a significant portion of scams overall, but for my particular industry it sure is. In any account, the way people are scammed on our site changes all the time depending on what's available/easiest for the scammers, so the methods they use are constantly changing/adapting.
ricc 7y ago
It's also quite common here in Germany especially with the elderly... But sometimes: https://www.dw.com/en/seniors-outsmart-con-men-posing-as-police-in-cologne/a-50515716 https://www.dw.com/en/seniors-outsmart-con-men-posing-as-pol...
koolba 7y ago
That's barely $0.15 per person which seems way to low. This is only the direct loss though. The real amount would include the millions of hours we collectively spend deleting voicemails from "Rachel from card services".
everdrive 7y ago
Phone scams are definitely getting worse. It's small measure, but I've disabled my voicemail. I still get the scam calls, but they're that much less annoying.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Given that this comes from scams reported to the FBI, my read is that this number is likely low by 10-100x. The personal scams are only a part of this too: scams against business are also running rampant.

49 points by elorant 7y ago

jagger27 7y ago

That’s not a staggering number, to be honest.

newnewpdro 7y ago
Agreed, it's lower than I expected. But I've heard multiple stories of people being scammed for large sums of money over the phone and they tell nobody outside their immediate family. It goes unreported. They're too embarrassed.

B_Throwaway 7y ago

Alternative headline: Americans lose on average 16 cents to phone scams in the last year.

stubish 7y ago
Yes, you can play with statistics that way if you want to sweep the problem under the carpet. If only the victims could get their potentially life changing losses amortized over the country's population somehow.
- pryffwyd 7y ago
  Chicago citizens were on average murdered .0002 times in the last year
incompatible 7y ago
It seems remarkably low, especially since it's supposedly the victims reporting to the FBI "some sort of phishing scam", (just phone scams, or including email etc?) "A whopping 26,379 people." Australians are expected to report over $532 million (AUD) in losses in 2019: https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/record-losses-expected-as-scammers-target-australians https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/record-losses-expected-as-...

grandmczeb 7y ago

Note this is reported scams. In some cases the victims may never even realize they’ve been scammed, and even those who do are frequently too embarrassed to talk about it openly. Many victims are also very old or recent immigrants and may not know how to report the scam. There are even scams that specifically target undocumented workers who may not want to report for fear of bringing unwanted attention to them by the government. I personally know half a dozen separate people who were either a victim or very nearly a victim of phone scams, so I have a very hard time believing the number isn’t much higher.

mcrae 7y ago

My girlfriend was speaking to her father (mid-60s?) who was complaining about what a pain in the ass it was to get his new iPhone configured. He had called Apple support who would come the next day, but now he had to go to Wal-Mart to pickup the giftcards to pay for the service. Wait. What? So I guess he had Googled for iPhone support and got some bogus phone number. Aside from the potential monetary loss, the scary part was that had they come to the house, he likely would have let them in. The world and the way in which we do business changes quickly, and red-flags for some aren't red-flags for others. But I'm really curious what search term lead to the fraudulent phone number in the first place -- how are these platforms so gameable?

grandmczeb 7y ago
No data to back this up, but at least in my experience victims finding a phone number directly from a Google search is actually pretty uncommon. Although, sometimes you’ll see fake numbers posted in the comments of news articles or YouTube videos that rank highly for search terms like “fix virus iPhone.” The most common way people get targeted is either via a pop-up while browsing (e.g. “Your iPhone has a virus! Call xxx xxxx now to fix”) or just random cold calls. Scammers also circulate lists of phone numbers/personal information of victims to previous scams, so once you end up as a victim of one you’re much more likely to be a target for new/more sophisticated scams.
- herenorthere 7y ago
  Probably not the norm, but I have worked alongside a tech company that has 30+ million user accounts, and as such, has a pretty much constant stream of scammers wishing to take advantage of our user base. The customer support dept. has a phone number to call, which is listed on the website. But you'd be amazed how many people are willing to call some random number so long as it shows up in a google result. Normally, it's older folks that fall for this type of scam. The fraud dept. sends a handful of take-down requests to google per week; but it really doesn't do much to stem the incoming flow of support hotline scams. Once a number is taken down, they just create a new website and new fake number. To reply to your comment more directly, I have no idea whether or not this scam type accounts for a significant portion of scams overall, but for my particular industry it sure is. In any account, the way people are scammed on our site changes all the time depending on what's available/easiest for the scammers, so the methods they use are constantly changing/adapting.

ricc 7y ago

It's also quite common here in Germany especially with the elderly... But sometimes: https://www.dw.com/en/seniors-outsmart-con-men-posing-as-police-in-cologne/a-50515716 https://www.dw.com/en/seniors-outsmart-con-men-posing-as-pol...

koolba 7y ago

That's barely $0.15 per person which seems way to low. This is only the direct loss though. The real amount would include the millions of hours we collectively spend deleting voicemails from "Rachel from card services".

everdrive 7y ago

Phone scams are definitely getting worse. It's small measure, but I've disabled my voicemail. I still get the scam calls, but they're that much less annoying.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Given that this comes from scams reported to the FBI, my read is that this number is likely low by 10-100x. The personal scams are only a part of this too: scams against business are also running rampant.