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It's not just old people. Plenty of young tech savvy people fall for these scams as well. The scammers are extremely well practiced, and are extremely good at

It's not just old people. Plenty of young tech savvy people fall for these scams as well. The scammers are extremely well practiced, and are extremely good at using misdirection and pressure cooker situations to make it extremely difficult for people to recognise the scam in the moment. Some of the scariest aspects of these scams is that they frequently use the banks own fraud protections and alerts against victims, creating transactions they know will be declined, or inducing the bank to send legitimate login warnings, to create evidence that a victim needs to act soon to protect their money. Scammers will also falsify phone numbers, calling from numbers that are either identical, or almost identical to the banks official number, and then ask the victim to compare the caller ID to number on the bank of bank card to build trust. Finally there's frequently a significant delay between the initial scam email/SMS and final scam. A victim will accidently enter their card details into fake package website, but nothing happens. Then three weeks later when they've forgotten about the fake website, the fraudsters will ring, using the data to "prove" they're from the bank, then ask the victim if they recently put their data into any dodgy websites (which of-course they did). Once they created the strong impression they're calling from the bank, reminded the victim of the earlier fake website, the victim is then perfectly primed to believe someone is trying to steal their money, and person on the phone is going to help prevent that. TL;DR, these scams are extremely sophisticated, and perpetrated by intelligent individuals who's full time job is figuring out how to socially engineer people into handing over their cash. Don't assume your somehow "better" or more "immune" to these scams, or that victims aren't educated and intelligent. That grossly underestimates how capable these criminals are, and induces people to ignore the issues and victim blame instead.

robotmay 5y ago
It's tempting fate to say it, but I've not fallen for a scam, or a phishing attempt, and I've been subjected to many. Natural distrust and cynicism perhaps. I don't answer the phone to unknown numbers, I don't click links in emails, I don't do business at the door or over the phone, and I don't believe anything other people tell me (can report that my girlfriend hates this aspect of my personality). The head of accounts in my previous company fell for a bank transfer scam (urgent payment request forwarded "from the CEO"), so I have seen it happen to young people, but I wouldn't say that person was "tech savvy". Being able to use a computer doesn't make you tech savvy, and I would say the number of tech savvy people is probably close to identical between younger and older age groups. Being intelligent in one aspect doesn't make you smart at everything else (which is why I avoid doing plumbing). What is missing is critical thinking and cynicism. I highly doubt most people check the full email source of anything they receive that looks important, but they should. People rely too heavily on technology to tell them when something is wrong, and they shouldn't. The scam example you describe is easily avoided: don't enter your details in the fake package website in the first place. Don't answer the phone to the unknown number. Don't believe them when they say they're from the bank. Don't do anything anyone tells you to. And if they try to rush you, that should make you stop and think why. I don't doubt the scams are getting pretty clever, but that doesn't mean the victims can't also be a bit stupid. Yes it's sad that they have fallen for it, but to shift all the blame elsewhere is unfair - we are ultimately responsible for our own actions.
- pashamur 5y ago
  Jim Browning (the renowned anti-scammer) recently fell for one of his own, where someone tricked him into disabling his Youtube account. So if the situation is right, almost anyone can fall for it (Gorilla on basketball court experiment)

robotmay 5y ago

It's tempting fate to say it, but I've not fallen for a scam, or a phishing attempt, and I've been subjected to many. Natural distrust and cynicism perhaps. I don't answer the phone to unknown numbers, I don't click links in emails, I don't do business at the door or over the phone, and I don't believe anything other people tell me (can report that my girlfriend hates this aspect of my personality). The head of accounts in my previous company fell for a bank transfer scam (urgent payment request forwarded "from the CEO"), so I have seen it happen to young people, but I wouldn't say that person was "tech savvy". Being able to use a computer doesn't make you tech savvy, and I would say the number of tech savvy people is probably close to identical between younger and older age groups. Being intelligent in one aspect doesn't make you smart at everything else (which is why I avoid doing plumbing). What is missing is critical thinking and cynicism. I highly doubt most people check the full email source of anything they receive that looks important, but they should. People rely too heavily on technology to tell them when something is wrong, and they shouldn't. The scam example you describe is easily avoided: don't enter your details in the fake package website in the first place. Don't answer the phone to the unknown number. Don't believe them when they say they're from the bank. Don't do anything anyone tells you to. And if they try to rush you, that should make you stop and think why. I don't doubt the scams are getting pretty clever, but that doesn't mean the victims can't also be a bit stupid. Yes it's sad that they have fallen for it, but to shift all the blame elsewhere is unfair - we are ultimately responsible for our own actions.

pashamur 5y ago
Jim Browning (the renowned anti-scammer) recently fell for one of his own, where someone tricked him into disabling his Youtube account. So if the situation is right, almost anyone can fall for it (Gorilla on basketball court experiment)