Scammers are always about. As long as people fall for scams, that gives incentive for scammers to continue their "business," and even to expand their business and target people in more sophisticated ways.
I've witnessed and am still witnessing a rise in elders who are getting scammed, and the scams are getting so good that I don't blame people for falling for them, but the worst part of scams is that people who get scammed are often so embarrassed that they don't tell anyone about it, thus making it easier for the scammers to continue.
When I was younger and before the internet, there were phone and mail scams. A common ploy involved you receiving a letter in the mail stating that you had won some draw for a new vehicle or motor home, usually a Jeep or something with good resale value, and that it had been a couple years and you had not yet claimed the vehicle, and now it was being held somewhere in a state/province near you. In order to get your vehicle cleared and delivered, you only needed to pay a couple thousand dollars. What's scary is that a lot of people fell for this obvious scam, and it continued for years. The letter people would receive often had one or more phone numbers you could call to confirm and discuss the situation. I recall my parents receiving such a letter and they knew it was a scam right away, but they played along with it for a while and dragged the scammers on for months until the scammers left an answering machine message yelling and screaming in a foreign language.
Sigh...
But that was back then, when technology was limited and the scams were so easy to spot.
Today, the scams come in all shapes and sizes.
I know of at least one woman who is caught up in a Nigerian Prince scam, and has been for years. She believes the man she talks to on the phone is her boyfriend, and he sends her money and she buys bitcoin and sends it back. She thinks she's helping him escape Nigeria to come to North America and they can get married one day and yadda yadda. Not only is she being scammed and believes she is in some kind of long term relationship, but she is likely also helping terrorists launder money, and eventually she'll be the one behind bars. I've heard through the vine that there are a lot of single women in North America caught up in this same long-distance relationship scam, and a lot of these women are working minimum wage jobs and barely getting by. But, they're desperate. Desperation is the ingredient to successfully getting scammed.
There are also the robocall scams claiming to be "the Federal Police" and that there is a warrant out for your arrest, but if you pay a few bucks to them they will call off the arrest. That one is is a dinosaur at this point, and they can't even be bothered to change the message year after year, but if they're still doing the same scam that means someone is probably still falling for it, right?
If the Federal Police scam doesn't suit your fancy, then the tax revenue agency scam might work. Similar to the Federal Police scam, you'll get a robocall claiming that your social security number is in a federal investigation and that you need to pay money.
Always with the money... Why can't scammers ask for something else?
Oh, but they do. Elderly people with laptops or tablets seem to be easy targets, as someone claiming to be from microsoft will call them, and talk them into giving remote access to the laptop to fix a problem with their operating system. Thank you sir/madam, we've fixed the problem. The next day, their bank account magically starts transferring money out, or even worse credit cards start getting used. You see, banks and other financial institutions have security measures that prevent someone from logging into your account from somewhere else, but if they do it remotely through your device, they bypass that security.
For every type of person in society, there is a scam tailored to them, and eventually they will be targeted.
Someone browsing sketchy websites in search of free content may suddenly find their computer locked out with ransomware.
Maybe you get an email from your bank saying you need to reset your password, and they provide a handy link that takes you to a form that has you enter in your password. It might look like your banks website, but its not. Phishing, they call it.
I have to admit, I've been really lucky in my life and I've yet to be scammed successfully, but that doesn't stop them from trying. I had four separate voicemails on my phone this week from four different scammers. Two were robocalls about tax agency investigation trying to get my social security number, one was the classic federal police scam, and another was some boat insurance scam that hasn't changed their robo message in ten years.
But that's just my cellphone. Email scams outnumber phone scams by a factor of ten.
Oh, there are even Amazon Employees stealing something you've ordered and putting junk in the box, forcing you to go through the whole return process to get your money back because you received a two dollar extension chord instead of a 200 dollar computer part. At least Amazon refunds you with Prime.
And eBay... I haven't touched that place in years. Getting scammed there is par for the course, and going through a paypal claim is irritating AF, just not worth the hassle.
I guess the rise of scammers shouldn't surprise me. The economic squeeze around the world is creating a 'Robin Hood' movement in poorer countries, where those of us living in "first world countries" need to be fleeced. Last I checked, that was our government's job through various forms of taxation (i.e. tariffs, inflation, income tax, sales tax, luxury tax, sin tax, etc), but as the proverb goes, "a fool and their money are soon parted."
Be careful out there, whether its on the internet or wherever. If you aren't desperate, then maybe you're greedy? All a scammer needs to do is find your weak spot, and then use that weakness to get your money. Maybe you're desperate for love? Or, maybe you're in debt and are just looking for an opportunity to be free of that debt (i.e. people stuck in the stock market or stuck in a vicious business debt cycle)? You better believe it, there is a scammer out there waiting to get you, and if something is either too good or too crazy to be true, then it very likely is.
Google doesn't call people. Neither does Microsoft. Free stuff on the internet can have trojan horses attached. The perfect soul mate for you isn't on match.com, and they didn't find you on facebook. The "federal police" don't shake people down, and your tax revenue agency doesn't call you with a robocall to inform you of anything, let alone a criminal investigation.
While all of these scams and many more out there seem so obvious, there will be newer and newer scams coming at some point, and if you have two nickels to rub together, their is someone out there working in a sweatshop, sitting at an old computer and phoning, emailing, texting, messaging, and targeting people who have any kind of wealth.
Be careful out there. The world is hurting, and if you aren't then you will be targeted.
Thanks for stopping by.
