Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill14564
Often times the difference between a sophisticated scam and a stupid victim is whether you are the one who fell for it.
Different versions of these imposter scams have been going on for years. They must be lucrative or the scammers would have moved on to something different. The solution is almost always the same: Don't accept unsolicited assistance and always contact the (bank, police, fbi, credit card company, amazon, etc) through a number you found yourself.
What I wonder is why, since they have been around so long, these scams still work? The seniors/retirees today were the young people of yesterday who warned their parents against these scams. What changed that they are now falling victim to the same thing?
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Why? Who really knows, unless it is to say that the scams are far more involved and targeted today (no AI a generation ago simulating our granddaughter's voice) and some retirees, even if not diagnosed, are often experiencing diminishing mental functioning.
But that's the quick answer (or one of them, anyway). If people want to get a better understanding, Psychology Today has a great article on this topic; "Why We Get Conned and How to Avoid It" (Daniel J. Simons, Ph.D and Christopher Chabris, Ph.D.) apa dot org. It is a transcript of a podcast from 2023 and is quite long, but does a really good job of explaining why people fall for what they do.