Comment by shockeychap | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shockeychap | Hacker News Reader

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> You might have telco experience, but you have no clue whatsoever about the economics of these scams.

Please watch your tone and choice of words. That sentence is more focused on defaming the OP than addressing the merit of what they said.

Furthermore, saying "it makes no difference to the scammers if they're paying 10c per minute or calling for free" shows an equally clear failure to understand the economics of these scams. The vast majority of calls made by a scammer will yield nothing. They have to make numerous calls to find the one sucker who can be convinced to turn over their financial information or mail cash or do whatever needs to be done. I don't know the exact per-minute cost at which most scams become cost prohibitive, but I'm pretty sure you'd be shocked at how little it is. If it takes 2,000 calls to find one victim, and you're paying 10 cents per call, you'll spend $200 per victim. Will you make that much back, and will it be enough to offset all of the other costs involved in trolling? It depends. But it definitely makes it less appetizing than when the calls are free.

>Please watch your tone and choice of words. That sentence is more focused on defaming the OP than addressing the merit of what they said.

It's not defaming the OP. I did address the merit of what they said.

> If it takes 2,000 calls to find one victim, and you're paying 10 cents per call, you'll spend $200 per victim.

Yes, but in reality it takes less than 10 calls to find one victim.

> Will you make that much back, and will it be enough to offset all of the other costs involved in trolling?

These scammers are pulling hundreds of thousands from individual victims. Even at the low end they're earning thousands.

These scams are so profitable that you can't increase costs of calling enough to stop them while also keeping phone calls accessible to normal people.

You're correct that some of the scams yield hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I knew someone to whom that happened. However, most scammers look for smaller payouts in quantity. Think of ransomware that make it look like your computer is full of viruses just so they can "sell" the uninstaller for a few hundred bucks. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of these incidents for every one incident involving a large $100K+ payout.

It makes sense, given that people are willing to act a lot more independently (without consulting others) when only a small amount is on the line, they often won't admit to these missteps out of embarrassment, AND, perhaps most importantly, it won't raise the ire of federal law enforcement enough to be concerned about things like extradition and prosecution.

> You're correct that some of the scams yield hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I knew someone to whom that happened. However, most scammers look for smaller payouts in quantity. Think of ransomware that make it look like your computer is full of viruses just so they can "sell" the uninstaller for a few hundred bucks.

Those are the exact scammers who will get you to install teamviewer/anydesk and use it to empty your bank account, with the $100 charge just working as a distraction. You can find videos showing how these scams work on youtube.

Of course lots of people won't have $100k or even $10k in their bank account, the scammers will just send those people out to buy gift cards or similar instead of wasting their drop accounts.

Even if only one in 1000 calls returns $100k, they're still averaging $100 per call.

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