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It boggles the mind that Apple and Google don’t take meaningful steps to combat this. Is it really that hard of a problem or do they just not care?

by bentt 1y ago

alejohausner 1y ago
I don’t see how technology is going to stop lonely old people from falling for someone who says they love them. Human desire is stronger than reason.
rawgabbit 1y ago
It is called pig butchering. Your online girlfriend teaches you how to invest in crypto. Both you and her get incredibly rich and you pour more and more money into your investment. Until one day you learn everything was a lie. Your online girlfriend. The riches you supposedly earned. The answer for these scam centers and for ransomware is to declare any nation that harbors them as state sponsors of terror. https://cyberscoop.com/ransomware-terrorism-ndaa-2025/ https://cyberscoop.com/ransomware-terrorism-ndaa-2025/
- rightbyte 1y ago
  Seems like a way to use lax consumer protection as an excuse to bomb people.
  - rawgabbit 1y ago
    That is an odd take. Ransomware gangs had held hospitals and cities in the US hostage for years. The scam centers are making elderly destitute who then have to fall back on the state for subsistence. If nations do not attempt to rein in these terrorist gangs, yes, they should be held accountable.
    - rightbyte 1y ago
      How about holding hospitals accountable for connecting sensitive systems to the internet. And not some poor country where government are hardly in control and some guy has some vpn server running in a closet somewhere. > If nations do not attempt to rein in these terrorist gangs, yes, they should be held accountable. I recognize this...
- intended 1y ago
  Pit butchering scams are a subtype of scams. The core issue with pig butchering is that the harm process is distributed across platforms, so there’s no single view of the problem at a platform level. This hasn’t stopped efforts to improve knowledge and coordination, but the next barrier to action is in geographical location, and out right kidnap of people to man the fake accounts. But now, to make matters worse, there’s LLMs which can simply fake humans at scale.
  - listenallyall 1y ago
    I find it pretty amazing that so many people have a positive view of AI, when the plus side is that it perhaps makes writing code faster and easier (although too fast and easy and you'll be put of a job) while the downside is, as you point out, widespread scamming at infinite scale, destruction of trust in photos and videos as reality, spamming, cheating, harming, and who knows what else once not-so-nice people get creative on its uses. Automated internment camps? Dynamic pricing to extract the absolute maximum from every consumer transaction? Families unable to trust each other? I expect them all and more.
constantcrying 1y ago
They already are doing something. Google will warn about potential scams in their phone app, for example. Same for Gmail. I think the most important issue is one of trust, which is one the scammers are trying to exploit. Do you trust Google saying "this might be a scam" over a person on your phone assuring you that there is some urgent need to do something? The answer depends obviously on how you view technology, generally older people tend to place less trust in technology and more trust in humans. That is why these scams work, they play on an inherent trust bias. I don't see that Google or Apple really can't do that much more, as the issue really is a social one.
- bentt 1y ago
  Here's an idea. If a call is detected as a scam, provide an OS level hook for the call to be diverted to an app that can access an API. That'd be all that Apple and Google would do. At that point, App makers would get access to the call and could do a variety of things with it. So for instance, you might have a vulnerable grandparent you want to protect, so you install an aggressive AI screener app to handle these things. Or, you might just send a log of calls to a loved one. Or, you might send a transcript of that call to a loved one, or an AI, or both for protection. Basically, Google and Apple saying "Potential Scam" says to me that they can know when a call is risky. They need to do more with that and open up an ecosystem of defensive software.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
frollogaston 1y ago
It's a hard problem.
hyperman1 1y ago
Why them and not the legal system? We should use the systems designed to catch criminals for catching criminals. Start with getting the phone companies to not lie about the real phone number. Then implement blocklists at the borders and catch the criminals inside your own borders. Start some interpol like treaties so cooperatieve countries can help each other, then treat the noncooperators as probable criminals. And do this for IP routing too while you're at it.
- bentt 1y ago
  It's not either/or. The legal system has its place, but so many scams are international and the jurisdiction is murky. Apple/Google are uniquely positioned here by owning the phone OSs.

It boggles the mind that Apple and Google don’t take meaningful steps to combat this. Is it really that hard of a problem or do they just not care?

by bentt 1y ago

It boggles the mind that Apple and Google don’t take meaningful steps to combat this. Is it really that hard of a problem or do they just not care?

alejohausner 1y ago

I don’t see how technology is going to stop lonely old people from falling for someone who says they love them. Human desire is stronger than reason.

rawgabbit 1y ago

It is called pig butchering. Your online girlfriend teaches you how to invest in crypto. Both you and her get incredibly rich and you pour more and more money into your investment. Until one day you learn everything was a lie. Your online girlfriend. The riches you supposedly earned. The answer for these scam centers and for ransomware is to declare any nation that harbors them as state sponsors of terror. https://cyberscoop.com/ransomware-terrorism-ndaa-2025/ https://cyberscoop.com/ransomware-terrorism-ndaa-2025/

rightbyte 1y ago
Seems like a way to use lax consumer protection as an excuse to bomb people.
- rawgabbit 1y ago
  That is an odd take. Ransomware gangs had held hospitals and cities in the US hostage for years. The scam centers are making elderly destitute who then have to fall back on the state for subsistence. If nations do not attempt to rein in these terrorist gangs, yes, they should be held accountable.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    How about holding hospitals accountable for connecting sensitive systems to the internet. And not some poor country where government are hardly in control and some guy has some vpn server running in a closet somewhere. > If nations do not attempt to rein in these terrorist gangs, yes, they should be held accountable. I recognize this...
intended 1y ago
Pit butchering scams are a subtype of scams. The core issue with pig butchering is that the harm process is distributed across platforms, so there’s no single view of the problem at a platform level. This hasn’t stopped efforts to improve knowledge and coordination, but the next barrier to action is in geographical location, and out right kidnap of people to man the fake accounts. But now, to make matters worse, there’s LLMs which can simply fake humans at scale.
- listenallyall 1y ago
  I find it pretty amazing that so many people have a positive view of AI, when the plus side is that it perhaps makes writing code faster and easier (although too fast and easy and you'll be put of a job) while the downside is, as you point out, widespread scamming at infinite scale, destruction of trust in photos and videos as reality, spamming, cheating, harming, and who knows what else once not-so-nice people get creative on its uses. Automated internment camps? Dynamic pricing to extract the absolute maximum from every consumer transaction? Families unable to trust each other? I expect them all and more.

constantcrying 1y ago

They already are doing something. Google will warn about potential scams in their phone app, for example. Same for Gmail. I think the most important issue is one of trust, which is one the scammers are trying to exploit. Do you trust Google saying "this might be a scam" over a person on your phone assuring you that there is some urgent need to do something? The answer depends obviously on how you view technology, generally older people tend to place less trust in technology and more trust in humans. That is why these scams work, they play on an inherent trust bias. I don't see that Google or Apple really can't do that much more, as the issue really is a social one.

bentt 1y ago
Here's an idea. If a call is detected as a scam, provide an OS level hook for the call to be diverted to an app that can access an API. That'd be all that Apple and Google would do. At that point, App makers would get access to the call and could do a variety of things with it. So for instance, you might have a vulnerable grandparent you want to protect, so you install an aggressive AI screener app to handle these things. Or, you might just send a log of calls to a loved one. Or, you might send a transcript of that call to a loved one, or an AI, or both for protection. Basically, Google and Apple saying "Potential Scam" says to me that they can know when a call is risky. They need to do more with that and open up an ecosystem of defensive software.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

frollogaston 1y ago

It's a hard problem.

hyperman1 1y ago

Why them and not the legal system? We should use the systems designed to catch criminals for catching criminals. Start with getting the phone companies to not lie about the real phone number. Then implement blocklists at the borders and catch the criminals inside your own borders. Start some interpol like treaties so cooperatieve countries can help each other, then treat the noncooperators as probable criminals. And do this for IP routing too while you're at it.

bentt 1y ago
It's not either/or. The legal system has its place, but so many scams are international and the jurisdiction is murky. Apple/Google are uniquely positioned here by owning the phone OSs.