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Americans lost a record $10.3B to online scammers last year, FBI says
- crayboff 4y agohttp://archive.today/2023.03.15-050147/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/americans-lost-a-record-10-3-billion-to-online-scammers-last-year-fbi-says-274d6139 http://archive.today/2023.03.15-050147/https://www.wsj.com/a...
- iKnowKungFoo 4y agoThe reply I was seeking.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wil421 4y agoHow do you guys protect elderly parents? My parents and in-laws aren’t there yet but they all in the retired age group. A friend of the family recently had his email hacked. They sent targeted emails to all his contacts and setup a filter to hide the communication. His brother in law is a stoke victim with impaired cognition and only has access to $12k or so at a time. They were able to scam all of it from him over multiple transfers and he never picked up the phone to call the family friend. The family fiend is also his caretaker and limits his funds access for this exact reason. The family friend is a retired old GE executive who will probably never run out of money no matter how many cars he buys due to pension funds. I wonder if he was targeted.
- twosdai 4y agoAllow list their phone number to only allow numbers they know to call/communicate with them. Restrict websites to a few domains on the devices they use. Youtube, wsj, etc... If they want a new one just tell them to ask you. It sucks and has problems, but its the only real straightforward and viable option I've seen work. Source: have grandparents who were regularly getting scammed or close to being scammed on a weekly basis.
- itake 4y agoI think you can get away with these restrictions since most of our grandparent’s lives, they didn’t have much access to these services. But what do we do when we get old? Will we be rational enough to disconnect ourselves? What if we don’t have any children that can help us make this decision?
- toomuchtodo 4y agoI have power of attorney and manage their finances for them (mid 90s relative). They spend on a credit card which I make payments against, and review transactions monthly for anomalies (anything besides Walmart, grocery store, pharmacy, Amazon, and recurring monthly services or utilities throws red flags). Make sure your estate planning is properly performed before they decline (physically or mentally). Behavioral improvements and education are nice to haves, but constant vigilance has a high cost for folks at this age and it only takes one successful adversarial attempt to succed. In this case, strong controls and guardrails are a superior solution imho. ($dayjob is infosec/risk mgmt)
- mindslight 4y agoYou might run into headwinds because in their era using a credit card was generally seen as a bad thing (borrowing, takes longer in line, etc). You might have luck finding a card with cash back rewards and/or a referral fee and selling them on those aspects.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIf they want someone to take care of them, then they need to give up some agency. Spending everything via credit card is the easiest and most effective way to solve this problem.
- mindslight 4y agoI mean, children also generally don't want someone to take care of them, and yet they don't have much say in the matter.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoIt’s easier to assume agency over your children than an adult. Sometimes, you even have to go to court (depending on circumstances). With elderly loved ones, as with everything in life, a negotiation takes place.
- coldpie 4y agoBeyond the obvious stuff like installing an ad blocker, I don't know. The best idea I've seen is what you already said, just limit access to funds. When my dad went through Alzheimers, we canceled his cards through the bank or let them expire and just never told him. But he was far enough gone that he would never have had reason to buy anything anyway so he never noticed. For someone still functional but easily tricked and unreceptive to the idea of limits, I don't know.
- crayboff 4y agoThe best option I found was to explain - multiple times - to my grandparents that these scams exist and how each of them work. Hopefully if they are ever approached by a scammer, they'll remember my warning and that hesitation will break them out of the fear used in the scams.
- ct0 4y agoI frequently remind my parents that nearly every email and phone call they get is a scammer. Might be good to "pen test" your parents, through a friend or something.
- gedy 4y agoIs there any way with US banks to only allow transfers via in-person, at-the-bank requests? Some accounts just don't need the convenience of online access, and tired of the "identity theft" spiel from banks to absolve themselves of responsibility.
- bearjaws 4y agoUnfortunately I had to just give my parents (68 and 67 years old) ground rules for all forms of communication. This happened after my dad got a fake $3000 invoice from paypal and he paid it. 1. If a service provider you use reaches out via email asking for money, its fake. Login to their online portal (it took a lot of coaxing to get them comfortable with this...) 2. If a service provider reaches out to you via SMS or Phone call, even if they know your account number or other sensitive data: Tell them you will call them back on the phone number listed on their website. If they insist, its fake. 3. If you aren't sure its fake, just ask me to look at it.
- notwhereyouare 4y ago#3 might be something to try and like really hammer home. Be like "I would rather you ask me about 100 different scam attempts and save $1000s then just pay"
- ryandrake 4y agoThese are good ground rules. Fortunately or unfortunately, my parents were scammed once pretty early on, I believe for a small amount, so they are well aware of what to look for. But after 10 more years of cognitive decline? 20 more? Who knows if they'll still be on guard. The simple rule of thumb that will keep people reasonably safe is: Do not trust anyone who E-mails or calls over the phone to be who they say they are. If they say they are from business XYZ, hang up the phone and call XYZ's main number and ask for them. While there are exceptions and scammers are getting craftier, incoming calls and E-mail is by far the major attack vector.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoThese are all very good. Here's one that saved me a fuckton of tech support time: set up dns adblocking/malware domain blocking right on their network/router settings. Save it to the factory defaults too if supported or put some tape over the reset pinhole button. My stepfather always tries the factory reset button as if it's just a more hardcore reboot to "fix" the internet when the service is simply out.
- jliptzin 4y agoMy parents are the same age and have already been scammed a few times. I set up similar rules but I am afraid they might get sucked in again. I don’t understand why law enforcement isn’t doing anything about this. Surely the surveillance dragnet they’ve set up over the last few decades can tell them who is making 750,000 calls a day to elderly people in the US?
- michael_vo 4y agoI really think there should be a startup that integrates with Plaid pulling all bank transactions to build AI models for this. I think real time alerts or daily summaries sent to trusted caretakers. Another layer is having the caretaker approve of the transactions. Can think of this as 2 factor authentication where they'd have to hack multiple phones or accounts for a successful scam. For example, seeing multiple gift cards would be suspicious. Or if you know your parents never take out more than 100$ from the ATM. Sometimes though they willingly scam themselves. My dad gave this real life scammer 30k in advance payment in return for future caregiving services. We told him she was scamming us and he didn't care. When she asked him for more money to buy a new car he finally realized she was truly scamming him.
- bombolo 4y agoThis seems a great app to get access to via using a scam!
- Mizoguchi 4y agoTalk to your bank to see what additional layers of security they can offer for moving money around. It could be as common as sending a pin to YOUR phone or that they actually call the bank to authorize it. Some join accounts also require approval from both parties to transfer large amounts of money. Additionally you can open a secondary account for your elderly relatives for daily expenses, they fund this account from their main account. Anything you do, do it at the banking level, do not rely on your elderly relatives to doge pretty sophisticated scams.
- snarf21 4y agoWe need a mechanism like a credit lock. The ability to block all transactions over $XX.00 until verified out of band. For a lot of these people, that would be only a few times per year and not a big headache. We need to give the CFPB more power.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- paulpauper 4y agoHow do you guys protect elderly parents? My parents and in-laws aren’t there yet but they all in the retired age group. How do you protect your car from your teens crashing it? Don't give them the keys
- neilalexander 4y agoI pretty much just tell them to assume that anyone contacting them by whatever means asking them to do anything is a scammer. In my experience, trying to list and explain all of the ways that scams happen actually has the complete opposite effect — either it ends up as information overload and they don't remember it, or they become so fearful of doing wrong in specific situations that they almost certainly become more vulnerable to fear-based attacks as a result.
- switch007 4y agoI did the same. It worked quite well even though my mother is a deeply trusting person who sees the good in everyone. I tell her that if she ever has any doubt whatsoever that she’s to call me any time any where and I’ll help. I also promised to cover any financial loss due to eg making a late payment because of my advice.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> How do you guys protect elderly parents? I told my mother (who is 81) that the answer is always no. There is never an emergency, the answer is always no, she should hang up and then talk to me. Personally, if possible (we live 10 minutes apart) or at least on the phone. Any legitimate need for money can wait that long. Fortunately, my mother has a somewhat technical background and her mind is 100% still there, so it hasn't ever been a real concern yet. She's skeptical by nature of what she sees online.
- andsoitis 4y ago> How do you guys protect elderly parents? My parents and in-laws aren’t there yet but they all in the retired age group. The ability to reason about money deteriorates with cognitive decline, in large part, I think, because it so abstract. The solution is for them to not have direct access to control all their finances, but rather get monthly amounts via a trust. That way, downside is limited.
- PopAlongKid 4y ago>rather get monthly amounts via a trust. That way, downside is limited. Unless the trustee is a scammer, or worse, one of several adult children who don't agree on how finances should be managed.
- andsoitis 4y agoRigorous trust design is important. Firstly, you have to trust the trustees (so you "scammer" risk is irrelevant). Secondly, it is typical to mitigate against a single trustee not acting in good faith by have an odd number of trustees.
- PopAlongKid 4y ago>you have to trust the trustees (so you "scammer" risk is irrelevant). So you are saying that if you trust the trustee, they can't be a scammer? I don't agree.
- andsoitis 4y agoI don’t know whether you’ve ever established a trust (I have), but the whole point in selecting trustees is that you trust them. They’re not some random person who duped you into a scam. They might break your trust (as the person who originated the trust) but that’s not the same as a scammer. A scammer is someone who who commits or participates in a fraudulent scheme or operation.
- nickthegreek 4y agoMy mom knows that if someone asks her for money outside of her normal bills, she texts me. This has worked well for us.
- TechBro8615 4y agoI upgraded my mom from an iPad to a Chromebook (her first computer) recently. I installed uBlock Origin and set a secure password for the Google account which I store in my password manager, and then instructed her to use the Chrome password manager when she needs it. While I'm confident in the security of Chromebook in general, I'm worried by how readily she pulls out her credit card and types the number into obscure sites for purchasing wedding gifts, etsy items, etc. A few years ago she would click on Facebook ads and buy shit quality products for little reason, but I think she eventually learned not to do that. At least it's a credit card and not a debit card. My dad manages the banking, and is a bit more sophisticated, but even he does things like install programs meant to protect him that actually expose him to more vulnerabilities. For example, there is some Symantec monstrosity installed on his computer that injects a green checkmark into Google search results next to each site it thinks is "trustworthy." It's definitely frightening and mostly a numbers game whether they'll be the next victims of a scam.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoI went the other way. I pulled PCs and anything they COULD install bad software out of the equation.
- Arrath 4y agoI've conditioned my parents to doubt every form of communication that comes to them, whether its a phone call, mailed invoice, or emailed. They'll take a picture and ask me before doing anything about it. Hopefully this practice continues as they age. Sure its a little more of a nuisance for me, but it also gives peace of mind that I'm helping in some small way.
- newsclues 4y agoCall your governments, and apply pressure to force them to force the business community (telcos, banks, etc) to stop tolerating this and get serious about it.
- rtp4me 4y agoWe have this sort of issue with my mother-in-law (90s). The best thing I did was setup a Chromebook (ChromeOS Flex) with just the basics (mail, photos, etc). From there, we routinely login to the GMail account and remove crap from her emails. It is tough - especially since the world is so on-line (photos of grandchildren, etc). Given the huge disparity between her age and technology, it is extremely important we act as her proxy for her online communications. Privacy be dammed.
- robbs 4y agoSomething I haven't seen mentioned is a DNS firewall to block phishing domains and newly registered domains. I use NextDNS for that and I'm sure there are others.
- DiabloD3 4y ago[flagged]
- hiidrew 4y agoFeel like this number will only grow with the consumer AI advances. Text is one thing, but also thinking of deep faking video/audio. Elderly seem especially susceptible. I have a close friend's grandma that was scammed out of 5k from a fake voice call.
- InCityDreams 4y agoMy new rule number 1. Always offer to call them back on a published number.
- amanj41 4y agoGlad the article answered my question right away - A large part of the fraud is in the crypto space
- yieldcrv 4y ago2.57 billion crypto, 7.73 billion in the space you respect I'm just here to watch the goal post move
- this_user 4y ago7.73 billion represents a very small fraction relative to actual utility. 2.57 billion represents 99.9% of something that has virtually no utility other than scamming people.
- yieldcrv 4y agothe most obvious red flag is that perspective is unfalsifiable. hence why you would have to always move the goal posts predictably further. as in, the crypto numbers could have been any amount and you would have said the same thing. if it was $1bn you would have said that, $500mm you would have said that. and thats, in conjunction with nothing in the crypto space having any utility, for you, and nobody else’s utility being valid, for you.
- Zuiii 4y agoWell said. It's always fascinating to see how quickly (and predictably) logic gets thrown out whenever cryptocurrencies are discussed on hn. Thank you for pointing this out.
- syx 4y agoI recently came across this video [1] made by a famous youtuber who was able to interview a scammer that regularly creates copycats accounts of his youtube profile to scam his user base. It gives an interesting backstory and if the scammer was actually telling the truth, there must be so many people who still fall for these schemes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iROF9Dd7FXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iROF9Dd7FXA
- cma 4y agoWith LLaMA out there once there is something like an open voice.ai to pair it with I could see this number getting much higher.
- antondd 4y agoThis will get much, much more ugly very quickly. Oh your daughter is spending her gap year in South East Asia? Find her social media -> download the videos with a sample of her voice -> generate audio of her asking you to help/send money because "she was robbed at a gunpoint" -> message your phone number/WhatsApp/Facebook account etc. These scams are possible now, but their quality will increase exponentially given that you won't need to know perfect English or be well versed in tech to do this.
- localplume 4y ago[dead]
- mbauman 4y agoIt's the quantity that scares me the most. These methods are imminently automatable, especially with a connection to social media graphs.
- KyleJune 4y agoCurrently they just say they have them. A more common one is pretending to be the police. They tell the family member that they have to pay bond for their child/grandchild to be released. My mom almost got tricked by a police scammer saying they have an arrest warrant for her due to not paying a debt and that she would be arrested if she didn't pay the money. Only reason it didn't work was because she didn't have the money and called me crying asking for help. Now she knows to never trust anyone requesting or demanding money over the phone.
- macinjosh 4y agoYou don't even need the fancy fake voice. Scammers called my Grandmother once, this was about 5/6 years ago, pretending to be me, her grandson. Pretending to be me, they told her I was in jail for cocaine possession and that she needed to wire money to bail me out. She believed it at first and was in her car driving into town to wire the money when she decided to try calling my cell to check. I told her I was in my office at work, and that I don't do drugs, lol. I am glad she had the idea to call my cell! I am fairly certain the only reason it didn't work on her in particular is that she knows I am a giant computer nerd with no friends so that was not something I was likely to be doing, haha!
- varispeed 4y agoNot sure what is more worrying - that people lost $10.3B or that this money is now in the hands of criminals who can do some bad things with it. I understand this is not just one scammer, but if they pooled that money together, this is kind of level of money that could influence elections in a small country or buy a small army or be used to take over legitimate businesses and use them for further money laundering while paying off politicians and civil servants.
- themitigating 4y agoIs there an indication that this money isn't just spread out to various scammers?
- pmarreck 4y agoIndia is very poor: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/governance/india-has-pushed-back-poverty-still-home-to-most-poor-people-in-world-undp-index-85502 https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/governance/india-has-pus... I doubt all the nefariously-collected money will in turn be used for nefarious purposes. It's entirely likely that a good portion of it would be used to do things like, pay for a decent living space for their family, buy a newer car, possibly buy a business to turn to more legit ways to make money that don't have the risk of getting caught.
- sumedh 4y agoOne of the excuse Indian scammers give is that the West stole money from India during colonial times now its India's turn to steal that money back.
- paulpauper 4y agoNot sure what is more worrying - that people lost $10.3B or that this money is now in the hands of criminals who can do some bad things with it. It's like when crypto is stolen. It's harder to process ill-gained proceeds than legally obtained proceeds. This means it takes time to launder it; you cannot just buy cars or whether with it; the govt. and police may be looking for it. So this means it likely has a deflationary effect in the short term by taking money out of the US economy that could otherwise be spent, but in the longer-term may have national security implications if the money goes to fund drugs, terrorism, whatever.
- jmondi 4y agoI was scammed $350 from one of the Zelle scammers. I know, I know, I was stupid for falling for it. My experience went like this: Just moved into new house, had the cable guy over setting up internet. I get a phone call from "The Electric Company" (they used the real name) saying that I just moved in and I didnt put down a deposit, blah blah, I need to pay $350 now or the power will go off. I needed internet for work the next day, and wifey factors.... I panicked and sent the money. I know, it was stupid, but there was a lot of shit going on, and I just fell for it. Literally IMMEDIATELY after I pressed the "send money" button, it dawned on me, I realized what I did, I hung up the phone and IMMEDIATELY called my bank asking them to reverse the payment. They would not do ANYTHING. They were completely useless, the person got my money and I had no way to stop it. A month later, I'm getting trees trimmed, and the company wants payment in Zelle. Begrudgingly I oblige, and send my payment to them over Zelle. It took over 48 hours for the money to be delivered to them. The tree company kept asking me what the heck was taking so long, I had to call my bank several times to see why the money wouldnt send. It was stuck in "pending" for almost 48 hours, and the Tree guys wouldnt do the work until it cleared. Moral of my ramble: fuck scammers, and fuck Zelle.
- pmarreck 4y agoWhen you move, a whole bunch of information about your move and the fact that you moved becomes available to local business owners. I'm not sure what process is in place that does this (maybe a mailing-address change card you give your post office?) but it is what happens, in the US at least. Usually you'll get a coupon book for local businesses- the fact that they know you just moved in is due to the same process. Anyway, ostensibly bad actors would likely easily get in on this, and frankly it's a clever move because they know you're frazzled and in a state of being disarmed and they knowing you just moved (and where, which explains knowing the name of your electric company) gives them an air of legitimacy and that's the perfect time to strike. Also $350 is not an entirely unreasonable amount of money to ask for.
- jjoonathan 4y agoWhen you start a business, same thing: you start getting fake bills from fake government agencies. I'm sure many people just pay them because the hassle of reliably figuring out what's real and what isn't can easily exceed the amount of the bill.
- mvonballmo 4y agoI didn't read the article. Does this include money lost on NFTs and crpyto? ducks
- krupan 4y agoSorry you feel you have to duck after saying that, because it really needs to be said.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoAnyone else remember NFT commercials with celebrities? Good times!
- yieldcrv 4y agoyes, it does. 7.73 billion lost in normal tech and banking. 2.57 billion lost in the crypto addition.
- LiquidPolymer 4y agoMy 84 year-old mother is constantly targeted. It’s extremely frustrating. Luckily she is extremely sharp and spots them easily. But if she wasn’t, it would be a constant struggle. Email, text, and live phone calls are the typical approach. I can’t count how many times people have claimed to be her grandson needing emergency funds (usually bail). She also gets fake invoices via USPS but I manage her mail so it never gets to her. It is never ending.
- pmarreck 4y agoAn entire article on this and no information provided or linked as to the patterns and techniques of these scams to inoculate readers against them... https://www.aura.com/learn/how-to-identify-a-scammer-on-the-phone https://www.aura.com/learn/how-to-identify-a-scammer-on-the-... https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-detect-a-phishing-email https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-detect-a-phish... apparently, if you are a business owner, you can pentest-phish your own employees, this sounds like an interesting business to be in: https://www.knowbe4.com/phishing-security-test-offer-ga-nav https://www.knowbe4.com/phishing-security-test-offer-ga-nav
- bydlocoder 4y agoHow many of them used the word "crypto"?
- stevenjgarner 4y ago$10.3B is just the reported amount. How many people (like myself) never report it. Surely many times that amount?
- optimalsolver 4y agoWhat happened?
- stevenjgarner 4y ago1st occurrence - years ago, my company had a business account at a Minnesota bank. I was issued a debit card on that account. The debit card was bilked for $850 by an “unknown” party. I informed the bank. They complained that I had a personal debit card on a corporate business account - which was not allowed (heck I never even asked for it) - if it were a business card I would be covered, but with a personal card I was not. They canceled the card, never to be replaced. Needless to say I communicated my displeasure, but at the end of the day there was nothing I could do. 2nd occurrence - in the past 12 months, I get the classic text message, “Steve, as you know it’s my brother’s birthday and I always send him a $500 gift card. I am in the hospital unable to communicate or take care of this, and I was wondering if you could do it for me - here is his number : 212-xxx-xxxx.” Now I DID know it was his birthday and I DID know she always gave him a $500 gift card (pretty nice sister), and I DID know she was in hospital for a few days. I also knew that he lived in NY so the 212 area code was a nice touch. But I also am very familiar with gift card scams, so I just wrote it off. I was thinking I should just call him, wish him a happy birthday myself and ask him a personal question about his sister to which only he would know the answer. In any event I was just about to board a flight and it would no longer be his birthday when I landed. Then literally 5 mins later I get another text from one of our mutual friends, who lives on the other side of the country - “Steve, is there any way you can help, <name withheld> needs someone to send the birthday gift card to <name withheld>. I told her I could not do it but suggested she might ask you instead.”. Okay this was now getting interesting, The texts came from 2 separate women. I knew both of their Verizon accounts were set up with 2FA (heck I set it up for them!). What’s the chance of both of their accounts being hacked at the same time? (extremely high as any cyber-security expert knows). Both of these women were trusted personal friends - it wasn’t some inside job - they were in fact hacked. Verizon was hacked. Etc. I have some last minute urgent business distracting me, with which I am on the phone with my PA - at the end of that call, I instruct my PA “oh also, send a $500 gift card to <name withheld> at 212-xxx-xxxx from <name withheld>”. I figured she would do it through our Amex facility, which has recourse for such fraud. She just bought one off a website. Now everything that happened I knew better. But it happened anyway. It was one of those perfect storm situations where I just wanted things taken care of and I wasn’t being diligent. I’m not proud of it, quite embarrassed in fact. The ex-husbands of both of those women are cyber-security clients of mine. Part of me even thought it was one or both of them. In the end, THEY were the only ones to whom I reported the scam (oh and whoever is reading this) as I felt a professional obligation. Any cyber-security expert will tell you that it is this social engineering and grooming that is the key to many of these scams. Scammers are even more surreptitious now, using AI-generated voices to leave messages sounding just like the known confidant. Be very wary and just always …. say no!
- hnburnsy 4y agoGreat job FBI adding up the totals, now how about some enforcement, much of this has to be organized.
- timcavel 4y ago[dead]
- ctennis1 4y agoMy wife got suckered into one a few days ago (though hung up before anything bad happened). We ordered a replacement pair of glasses for my daughter, and the store said they would call when the glasses came in so we could pick them up. Flash forward a few days, and she gets an automated called saying something akin to "Your delivery is on hold, please press 1", so she did, and got connected to an "agent" who she started talking with. In her conversation it became obvious to me it was a scammer, so I told her to hang up, but not before she got overly concerned at me. She's pretty aware of these things, but it was just a right place at the right time kind of thing that caught her off guard even though there were plenty of warning signs.
- Mawr 4y ago> it was just a right place at the right time kind of thing Scammers abuse this principle by sending out texts to the tune of "Your package is on hold until you pay.". The chances a random person is expecting a package at any given time are pretty good.
- kube-system 4y agoAnd confirmation bias is strong. The above commenter didn't even have a package being delivered -- they were going to pick up the glasses from the store. But you sometimes hear what you expect to hear, rather than what was actually said.
- IntFee588 4y agoPeople often act like victims of scams need to be smarter, however widespread scamming places an immense burden on the broader economy. It increases the cost of doing business, since you have to do more verification for any transaction. We don't blame victims of other crimes, scamming shouldn't be an exception. Imagine if you went to a restaurant, and the staff refused to serve you until you showed them your bank account balance to prove you could pay. It is an immense failure of law enforcement to not crack down harder on widespread scams.
- wpietri 4y agoAbsolutely. And every dollar in the hands of scammers is funding the creation of new and better scams. Even if we didn't care about scam victims at all, society should vigorously pursue scammers just to keep the overall burden down.
- luckylion 4y agoAnd it seems like a no-brainer money-wise too. A dedicated task-force of 10 people might cost you a million a year, but they'll easily track down scammers doing that amount of damage per month. I recently took an interest into a phishing campaign because the guy was using Amazon SES and kept using new email templates and it kept landing in my inbox. He was an amateur and it was easy to find juice things on his server, and it looked like he was engaging in all kinds of different scams, like phishing for bank logins, defrauding online-shops, identity theft etc. With law enforcement options, I'm pretty confident I could've nailed him with a few hours invested. Get him for one crime, you stop 10 others. But the last time I talked to a police officer locally, he didn't know what Netflix was so I won't even try to explain phishing to them and how I got this information on the perp.
- nradov 4y agoA task force of 10 law enforcement officers and support staff with the necessary technical skills is going to have a fully loaded cost way higher than $1M per year.
- krupan 4y agoThere's a scam going around targeting teenage boys that I don't see people talking about. Scammer poses as a cute teenage girl on Snapchat/TikTok/Instagram and starts DMing a teenage boy late at night. Eventually convinces boy to send a dick pic, then reveals himself and says, "Got you! I'm going to send that dick pic to your parents and everyone at your school unless you send me money!" The scammers will even voice call them at this point and threaten them that way. The boy that got scammed is so embarrassed that they won't tell anyone and they send the money. It seems they must be carefully targeting relatively clean cut (so they'll be sure to be embarrassed) and wealthy kids (so they actually have $300 to send). It's mind blowing how well these scammers do their homework
- optimalsolver 4y ago[flagged]
- shusaku 4y agoThat’s a pretty old scam, but kids these days seem to have easier access to credit cards than when I was growing up, so I expect it is quite lucrative.
- st0le 4y agoThere's a Black Mirror episode with this plot.
- ourmandave 4y agoThey did this to US service men. The scammers claimed to be underaged girls and they would ruin the soldiers reputation unless they paid. Some committed suicide from the shame.
- optimalsolver 4y agoAnd that was just in the FTX collapse.
- sandworm101 4y ago>> Americans lost a record $10.3B to online scammers last year, FBI says I laugh a little at the language. What is the net loss? How many Americans have gained money through online scams? If we want to talk about the impact to the economy, those dollars are not necessarily leaving the equation. Illegal market activity is still market activity.
- mrgriscom 4y agoI just had some fraudulent withdrawals on my bank account pretending to be paypal. They did the two sub-$1 authorization transactions, then took out $400 then "reversed" it by putting it back into my account... maybe to attract less suspicion and execute a larger fraud later?? Anyway, my bank reversed the withdrawals and I just got to keep the $400 the scammers deposited in.
- optimalsolver 4y agoWas that just the bank refunding you?
- optimalsolver 4y agoMost of these scammers are abroad (India, Africa, Eastern Europe), which is why these crimes are next to impossible to prosecute.
- notch898a 4y agoI thought wire fraud was extra-territorial. Didn't they get SBF that way?
- kube-system 4y agoThe FBI doesn’t measure economic activity, they measure crime.
- bmitc 4y agoMaybe if the government did something to force companies to handle this or prevent attempts. The majority of phone calls, snail mail, and even email are nothing but spam and phishing attempts. I just don't even answer my phone anymore, as it's not a phone. It's just a terminal for spam calls. According to my mail, the warranty on my car and house has expired a couple dozen times. Even Gmail's spam filtering has gotten worse where several make it through.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoMaybe the government should be enforcing laws and pursuing criminals as opposed to expecting businesses to solve this via creating a credit rating system for all aspects of one’s life.
- titoCA321 4y agoIn some areas if you live in apartments, folks actually knock on your door to sell you religion and vacuum cleaners. 2023 and still we have door to door sales.
- bdominy 4y agoIt is important for everyone to protect their contact information as usually the first step for scammers is harvesting those details. Use a junk email account for all of your online transactions. Try getting a secondary phone number you can give out to everyone who isn't close to you. Avoid giving access to your contacts for any mobile apps. Be mindful about who has your contact info and what you are sharing.
- ilamont 4y agoMost of this qualifies of straight-up fraud that will never be prosecuted. You're lucky if the police will take a report. Detectives will only poke around if they know it's local. AGs and DAs don't care about small-scale scams and ripoffs and cheats, generally aren't equipped to investigate them, and if the party committing fraud is in another country are likely to throw up their hands and say "not in my jurisdiction." The only way this can be addressed is the extremely unlikely scenario of making the platforms legally responsible for getting the money back, under the threat of sanctions measured as a multiple of losses or a fraction of total revenue.
- nineplay 4y agoI've gotten a few voicemails that are a recorded message telling me that I am going to be arrested the next day unless I call back. I know it's a scam but it's still physically alarming. I picture being arrested, I picture being thrown in jail at the mercy of the justice system. I imagine what will happen with my job and my family. Its so frightening that I completely understand why people will pay hundreds of dollars to make that feeling go away. The sickening thing is that I'm sophisticated enough to not fall for it. I'm white, I'm college educated, I'm a comfortably employed engineer, I know that I'm at a relatively low risk of being arrested without cause. A lot of other people probably get these calls, probably suspect it's a scam, but don't have the same level of confidence and just hand the money over. These scams prey on the people who can least afford it. I was also getting voicemails from a lovely recorded female voice saying "someone who loves you very much has asked us to reach out to you, please call us back". Again, rationally I know it's a scam, but still emotionally I feel how nice it would be to think that someone out there cares about me. It much be nearly irresistible to lonely people.
- jahnu 4y agoI got those a few times here in Austria. In fairness for me it was amusing since it’s obvious the FBI don’t have jurisdiction here and seems unlikely they’d use an obvious and poor text to speech generator. A more clever one I got just the other day started with a text to me in German claiming to be from my son saying he lost his phone and this was his new number. Even though it was preposterous I did take a few moments to recognise it was a scam.
- smilner37 4y agoShe's the scammer, of course she is putting out poor me as I put out calls. She is to chicken to answer the door to me, a officer and the woman and children she stole from. Chicken bock bock.
- smilner37 4y agoThou shalt not steal! Stealing is illegal, improper and not the way to get to the top. Yes call me Sarah Milner the owner of everything you stole, you have my kids too?!!! I have worked my whole life in care centers and been a mom to my children 15 years. No one can take that from my children and I. And everyone knows who the real me is! YOU ARE FAKE!
- Rudism 4y agoPart of me wonders whether some of the recent advancements in LLMs could help detect and stop scams by having them pre-process emails, texts, or monitor transcripts of ongoing phone calls and have them alert the user if the content seems scammy, or even just advise of common-sense precautions that could be taken (for example "you should hang up and call your bank back at the number on their website"). Another part of me is kind of horrified at the privacy implications of that, and questions if that potential trade-off would be worth it given that such a service would undoubtedly be run by a private corporation.
- csunbird 4y agoIf anything, LLM's will make it worse.
- mashygpig 4y agoGet ready for the gpt powered scams that call your family members and use a text to speech model that mimics your voice because a few second snapshot of your voice is all that’s now needed to reasonably mimic you. Maybe it’s too expensive to run right now for scammers, but just wait a few months or weeks for the open source models to shrink and improve!
- danielvaughn 4y agoTime for someone to get creative and build a gpt-powered kitboga chatbot.
- newsclues 4y agoAs someone that has gone to school for digital security and been employed in roles dealing with this, and just generally being a nerd interested in learning about this stuff, even I see how good these scams are and how hard they can be fore people like me to spot, and I don't understand why there aren't legal, regulatory and technological measures being taken to make it harder to scam people and easier to fix problems when they happen.
- wesapien 4y agoThat's measly compared to the schemes that are being run by legal institutions. Society is just too powerless to do anything.
- PopAlongKid 4y agoMany responses state that "government should do something" or "there would be net positive payback if we only hired a team of experts to hunt these scammers down". But consider the IRS. They are supposed to go after millions of tax cheats who "scam" the rest of the taxpayers by failing to pay taxes they legally owe[0], but Congress generally does whatever they can to prevent the IRS from enforcing the tax laws. So why would they be interested in going beyond that to pursue scammers that prey on those who are not ultra-sophisticated? [0]https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-the-tax-gap https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-the-tax-gap
- kube-system 4y agoCongress does not have the ability to enable the IRS to collect many of these taxes even if they wanted to, as many of the scammers live outside of the US. The only real way to address the issue is to either force domestic intermediaries (banks, telecom) to put up roadblocks, or have law enforcement do their best to corporate with foreign law enforcement.
- Zuiii 4y agoThe US gov could pull a FACTA if they really cared: Institutions and employees found to process more then a specified percentage of scammed funds/giftcards get sanctioned, thereby cutting them out of the defacto world financial system. This approach works extremely well for FACTA, so much so that some foreign banks bend local laws to comply. Scammers would get absolutely destroyed if this was implemented.
- kube-system 4y agoThere aren’t any legitimate foreign companies involved in gift card scams, just the scammers stealing otherwise legitimate gift cards issued for US companies and selling them on secondary markets. Google doesn’t really have any way to manage what people do with a physical Google Play gift card, nor does the grocery store that sells it. If you were to make those parties responsible for fraud, they’d simply stop selling them. Gift card are neither of their primary businesses. Scammers could also just move on to cryptocurrencies, which are already subjected to sanctions in some cases with varying degrees of success. Banks are easier to sanction because they have a more tangible physical presence.
- nicgrev103 4y agoI thought about setting up a foundation that mock scams people as a form of scam education after my wife was scammed in a classic tax text scam. Thoughts?
- djcannabiz 4y agoThats an interesting idea. Sort of like a scam pen test? Some other commenters talked about the difficulty in getting other family members to take the threat seriously, maybe this could work as a demonstration tool.
- nicgrev103 4y agoYeah 100%, the family members could give contact info for those they think are vulnerable and you can as you say 'pen test' them.
- convexfunction 4y agoLove it. Execute the scam, immediately send the money back (or better, somehow don't accept it in the first place) and tell them what happened with a link to an informative webpage. Might even be self-sustaining if you solicit donations from the victims concurrently with revealing the fake scam (though, uh, perhaps they'd be unusually wary about giving any amount of money right then and there to some organization they'd never heard of before). ChatGPT-4 throws some cold water on the idea, naturally, though I still think there's something there: ==== me: i have an idea for a non-profit foundation that would leverage LLMs to perform "online scam pentesting" at scale, as a public service. basically, we would execute pretend online scams very similar to real online scams that people are victimized by (fake invoices, romance scams, etc), but immediately send the money back if the pseudo-victim falls for it along with a brief explanation of what happened and our foundation's mission, along with a link to an informative webpage with helpful resources on online scams. (if the victim ignores the pseduo-scam, we'd perhaps wait a day and then followup with the same info.) this seems to me like it'd be potentially legally fraught, though i'm not sure exactly how, or if there's any relevant legal precedent on the topic. what do you think? ChatGPT: I am not a lawyer, but I can provide some general thoughts on the potential legal challenges associated with your idea. It's important to consult with a legal professional for advice tailored to your specific situation and jurisdiction. Consent: Executing pretend online scams without the consent of the individuals involved could potentially be a legal issue. Consent might be difficult to obtain without revealing the purpose of the exercise, which could defeat the purpose of the "pentesting." Privacy: Collecting, storing, and processing personal information might raise privacy concerns, especially if the information is sensitive. Different jurisdictions have different regulations, such as GDPR in the European Union and CCPA in California, which govern the collection and processing of personal data. Fraud: Even though your intention is to educate and protect people from scams, the act of sending fake invoices or pretending to be someone else could potentially be considered fraudulent behavior. This could open up your organization to legal liabilities. Unintended consequences: If someone experiences financial, emotional, or other harm as a result of your "pentesting," they might choose to take legal action against your organization. Regulation of LLMs: Depending on the jurisdiction, there might be specific regulations governing the use of LLMs, especially for activities that can be perceived as deceptive. Precedent: While there may not be direct legal precedents for this type of activity, similar cases involving penetration testing and ethical hacking might provide some guidance. However, those cases typically involve consent from the targeted organization, which is a key difference from your idea. To minimize potential legal risks, you could consider alternative approaches to educating people about online scams. This could include creating awareness campaigns, providing educational resources, or partnering with organizations that share your mission to fight online scams. Regardless of the approach you choose, it's essential to consult with legal professionals to ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
- nomercy400 4y agoHow much did Americans lose on crypto and banking, and inflation? Anybody has any of those numbers?
- ChickenNugger 4y agoWage theft is ~$15B annually: https://www.denver7.com/news/national-politics/the-race/wage-theft-is-the-costliest-crime-in-america https://www.denver7.com/news/national-politics/the-race/wage...
- favaq 4y agoA number as made up as the one in the original headline of this submission.
- cobertos 4y agoThe scammers are getting better data now too. I ended my AT&T service and sent back my modem, with a penalty if you fail to do so. Somehow, a separate entity is now calling me about it, in the exact time frame AT&T would if I had not returned it. If I hadn't checked the phone number they ask you to call (other people reported the same thing) then I would not have known it was a scam
- garyfirestorm 4y agoLately I have been getting really smart and crafty scams. 1. No obvious reasons to believe it is a scam i.e. no typos or anything. Mail from a prepaid card that we didn’t use a certain card balance and them asking us to send information (includes SSN#) so we could claim the unused card balance. 2. My wife got a mail from the vendor of a certain HSA account saying that they had been breached and her information could be compromised and to signup for some experian service that had a little different domain name from experian.com. I almost fell for these two because 1. We did get gift cards from ppl few years ago and maybe I didn’t use them all 2. I’m aware of experian credit locking but if I were to do that I would Google experian and not point to that strange domain. Also why is vendor of HSA company contacting us, shouldn’t the HSA company inform us about this hypothetical breach?
- convexfunction 4y agoMy mother got completely wiped out by a romance scammer, tens of thousands of dollars over >1 year, all via cash dumped into a Bitcoin ATM I believe. AFAIK she's still talking to the "guy", or she was when I broke off contact with her, after I and just about every other loved one, her bank, and the actual **ing FBI have all patiently explained many times the nature of the scam and exactly how we can tell it's a scam (beyond just "you've never met this dude or even had a video call and he's weirdly financially needy for someone who makes so much money") and sent her all sorts of articles and online resources on the topic and she reassured everyone that she recognized she'd been such a fool and would cut off all contact. And no, she wasn't displaying any other symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's or anything like that that I could recognize. I don't know if OpenAI/etc keep close enough tabs on usage that they'd be able to identify if they have people abusing their product for these types of scams, but even if they are I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the leaked LLaMA weights or similar are applied for this purpose, if it's not happening already. Not a clue what's to be done collectively if law enforcement doesn't care beyond the FBI keeping an eye out for "more serious" money laundering stuff (I suspect that's why they actually care as an institution), but I can share a little practical advice that maybe you won't hear elsewhere: 1. If you're substantially financially supporting your parents or whoever else, you're entitled to and need to understand their budget in extreme detail, just like if you were married. They should be able to explain and prove all of their income and all of their expenses, and they should understand that your generosity is not entirely unconditional -- in the same way that you wouldn't be willing to enable, say, a heroin addiction, you also aren't willing to enable literal scams. (And, of course, they should understand why you need this info and what risk you're trying to protect them and yourself against.) This still doesn't protect them fully, since they can e.g. be persuaded to sell their home and send it all off in secret and only tell you about it once it's too late, or just lie and continue sending off small amounts of money over time. But, it helps limit your exposure, and if you're lucky will make them think twice about people they've never met in person soliciting money from them online. 2. If you see a loved one fall for any online scam, that should probably increase your estimation of their ongoing susceptibility to similar scams, even if they seem to "get it" after the fact in that specific case, even if you don't think of them as particularly gullible in general. Perhaps they'll learn and be more careful, or perhaps they won't and you're just learning new information about them that's unlikely to change. 3. Don't underestimate what even simulated love can make people do. My once-good relationship with my mother, who I never would've considered a "bad person" a few years ago and never displayed any antisocial tendencies to me before, was ruined by her repeated and pervasive deception and theft.
- jallen_dot_dev 4y agoThe scam I've only recently began seeing is the Paypal Invoice scam. You'll get an email directly from Paypal saying you owe money for an antivirus subscription or for some service or something. I didn't fall for it because I figured anyone with a Paypal account can generate and send an invoice through Paypal to any email address. But I wouldn't be surprised if this scam gets a lot of people. It's a well known company, the email is directly from them, and it's a legit looking invoice saying they owe money.
- cde-v 4y agoGood, they are modern day Robin Hoods, redistributing wealth from the senile boomers hoarding their wealth to the generations they stole the future from.
- slaw 4y agoMy iPhone was stolen. Now scammers asks me to login to findmy.device-id.cloud to check where my stolen iPhone is. The page looks like real Apple iCloud page.
- jmugan 4y agoThat dollar amount doesn't account for the cumulation of depressing feelings that come every time you receive another scam. I think it makes us feel less cooperative in general and maybe even makes us less likely to try to help others.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoDoes the FBI do anything about this? Is the fact that Indian and other "third world" scammer call centers operate with near-impunity being treated as an assault on American citizens as it should? Yeah, uh, the travesty that is the "do not call" federal list is all you need to know. Like everything these days, if it's not for important people, and by people I mean corporations, the government doesn't care. You want to know what shows how bad our government is these days? I'd guess that support for Do-Not-Call is probably over 70% popular support, and it never gets implemented properly, enforcement is clearly nonexistent. There is a decade-long war on consumer protection and credit protections for everyday people.
- yieldcrv 4y agoScammers finally learned that using broken english to only target gullible people leaves a huge gap in the market of just making better scams.
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- nichohel 4y agoIf you would like to hear the tactics and voices of some phone scammers preying on the elderly using a "bail scam", have a listen to the audio files here: http://main.interstice.com:8090/?p=49 http://main.interstice.com:8090/?p=49