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But it’s not someone on the phone - it’s their best friend / star-crossed lover who they met on WhatsApp because of a chance wrong-number text! Since then they’

by rafram 1y ago

But it’s not someone on the phone - it’s their best friend / star-crossed lover who they met on WhatsApp because of a chance wrong-number text! Since then they’ve become incredibly close, and they can trust each other with anything. When their lover gives them some amazing investment advice and it requires clicking through a scary-looking prompt (like they do all the time on a phone), who do they trust - their one true love or a generic warning message on their phone? You have to take into account that the threat model here is vulnerable people, often older, being taken in by scammers who talk to them for weeks and gain their complete confidence. To the victims, it feels like a real romantic relationship, not someone who could even possibly be a scammer.

microtonal 1y ago
The solution is not taking people's freedom away. The solution is education. Lesson 1: lovers are not for investment advise. Also, scams also happen outside smartphones. What's next? Are we going to revoke people's control over their financials because they might be scammed? Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. And since we are using their payment platform, maybe they should also take 30%. Please stop feeding their narrative. Scammers are Google/Apple's "but think of the children".
- rafram 1y ago
  > lovers are not for investment advise. Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. > Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. Yes… That’s already how it works. Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. That’s why most of these scams ultimately involve crypto.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. Obviously, the probability of it being a scammer reduces with the amount of time. In the end it's a function of time vs. effort. Scamming billionaires by marrying them and waiting until they die happens frequently enough. A 5 year scam for a few thousand bucks, unlikely. As usual, use common sense, which you would have to do anyway if you do investments.
    - rafram 1y ago
      There are lots of older people who have never really invested their money, have a lot in their savings account, and might be excited by the idea of a get-rich-quick crypto investment they hear about from someone they trust. Even if they’ve only known them for a little while.
  - Hizonner 1y ago
    > Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. ... and it's really fucking annoying when their heuristics misfire-- which is not at all rare-- especially since they do all they can to externalize all costs of that to the customer.
- throw0101c 1y ago
  > The solution is education. We've been trying to educate people about passwords and phishing for years/decades now, and it has not worked. Further, every day a new ten thousand (US) people need to be educated: * https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/

by rafram 1y ago

microtonal 1y ago

The solution is not taking people's freedom away. The solution is education. Lesson 1: lovers are not for investment advise. Also, scams also happen outside smartphones. What's next? Are we going to revoke people's control over their financials because they might be scammed? Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. And since we are using their payment platform, maybe they should also take 30%. Please stop feeding their narrative. Scammers are Google/Apple's "but think of the children".

rafram 1y ago
> lovers are not for investment advise. Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. > Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. Yes… That’s already how it works. Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. That’s why most of these scams ultimately involve crypto.
- microtonal 1y ago
  Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time. Obviously, the probability of it being a scammer reduces with the amount of time. In the end it's a function of time vs. effort. Scamming billionaires by marrying them and waiting until they die happens frequently enough. A 5 year scam for a few thousand bucks, unlikely. As usual, use common sense, which you would have to do anyway if you do investments.
  - rafram 1y ago
    There are lots of older people who have never really invested their money, have a lot in their savings account, and might be excited by the idea of a get-rich-quick crypto investment they hear about from someone they trust. Even if they’ve only known them for a little while.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. ... and it's really fucking annoying when their heuristics misfire-- which is not at all rare-- especially since they do all they can to externalize all costs of that to the customer.
throw0101c 1y ago
> The solution is education. We've been trying to educate people about passwords and phishing for years/decades now, and it has not worked. Further, every day a new ten thousand (US) people need to be educated: * https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/