Victims speak out over ‘tsunami’ of fraud on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The Internet has just exasperated an already present issue of low empathy, reactionary politics, and get rich quick schemes
All of those posts still count as "engagement" and even scammers generate ad impressions, so why would they not only kill the golden goose, but actually spend money doing so?
Millennials and Gen-Z were raised on the Internet and therefore have an innate understanding of what is real and most importantly, what can be faked. Its a lot harder to scam. them.
If I told my parents about a Nigerian oil executive who needs to move $20 million out of a bank account, they would scratch their head. If I told my 28 year old co-worker, he'd laugh and understand the joke.
So, maybe in 20+ years, nobody will fall for these scams anymore.
Technology also enables new scams as time goes on. You can now use automation and AI-esque tools to research potential marks, simulate the voice of a loved one in a plausible distressing situation, and call to ask for money. That sort of thing was much harder 20+ years ago and is today as plausible as setting up a cold call list for selling home insurance was back in the day.
Nowadays, social media and all Big Tech platforms rely on people forgetting such advice and pretending like everything is trusted and there are no bad actors anywhere, because they themselves are a bad actor. They wouldn't want a wary user that never provides personal details nor makes any payments, because this also means they won't provide any personal details to Facebook nor spend any money on a Facebook-advertised product.
I'm especially worried about the newer generations, those that never experienced the early days of the internet and started off in "walled gardens" and phones/tablets. Those are prime targets for scammers.
I do IT security; people send dodgy stuff to me for vetting. But I'm naturally on my haunches for those.
I once got an gift card scam email sent from a friend's account. Scam was newish and arrived while I navigating a parking garage after a concert, car full of family. I initially responded ("w/ family, back to you soon") and was a few miles down the road before I had enough brain free to properly consider it.
These guys spray and prey. Eventually they hit something.
> In 2021, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z young adults (ages 18-59) were 34% more likely than older adults (ages 60 and over) to report losing money to fraud, and some types of fraud stood out. Younger adults reported losses to online shopping fraud – which often started with an ad on social media – far more often than any other fraud type, and most said they simply did not get the items they ordered. Younger adults were over four times more likely than older adults to report a loss on an investment scam. Most of these were bogus cryptocurrency investment opportunities. And this age group reported losing money on job scams at more than five times the rate of older adults. Many college students reported that they were scammed after getting a message at their student email address about a so-called job opportunity. The median individual reported fraud loss by people 18-59 was $500 in 2021.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spo...
Another important thing to understand is the amount of fake propaganda passing off a news. Not just propaganda but we categorize some editorial style talkshows on YouTube as news. News itself isn't supposed to be bias. It isn't supposed to be entertaining. It is supposed to be just informative.
Same thing with phone scams - have carriers route all inactive numbers to a police-run call center where scambaiters not only waste the time of scammers (potentially killing the entire business model of the scams) but also collect information such as the target bank account where the scammed money ends up.
Oh yeah I know, why spend effort investigating actual crime when you have an endless supply of victimless "crime" of people consensually growing/trading/consuming a plant?
1. Purchased electric scooters by following an Instagram ad. It was around Christmas time. The scooters were really cool looking. Turned out, they used the promotional videos from another company’s real product. I did get the money back from the credit card company.
2. Purchased a pillow by following an Instagram ad. Never received it. It turned out to be a fake store to just steal people’s money. Wasn’t enough money to worry about it.
3. Followed an ad from Twitter for a marshmallow company. Placed an order as a gift for someone else. Turns out they never actually send orders. They just take people’s money. The online store was amazingly designed. Awesome photos and functioned really well. I think it was a legitimate business at one point, but decided it was easier to just steal people’s money. There wasn’t any reason to think the store was a scam. If I checked online reviews first though, I would have found the warnings posted everywhere not to order from them.
Came close to placing an order from a clothing store. Prices were slightly too good to be true. This time I checked online reviews and it turns out they never ship orders either.
All three times were years apart. Happened while mindlessly scrolling and when your guard is down. I don’t order stuff from random sites either, but the products were just the right thing to peak interest.
The worst frauds still happen over phone and involve banking and old people.
If someone impersonates me, and uses my 'super secret' information to get a new credit card in my name, (like birthdate, DL number, or the number I have to put on any credit application, employment, etc) its now MY responsibility to correct my credit reports, contact people sending me to collections, file police reports, etc.
My state (OR) just this week lost drivers license info on every license in the state to to a hack on the MoveIT zero day. They recommend you check your credit reports for suspicious activity.
They just shoved responsibility for the mess of all our drivers licenses onto 3.5M of us to fix...
https://www.domstol.se/hogsta-domstolen/avgoranden/2022/1155...
(This was by far the most satisfying court decision I've read for years.)
1) the economic situation in some countries such as the UK being so dire that the risk/reward calculation of crime now starts to be worth it. If people see no way out in a legitimate career, they will turn to crime because they have nothing to lose.
2) would-be criminals are finally noticing that law enforcement has completely dropped the ball on investigating/prosecuting these crimes, so it's literally "free money" with no actual risk of being caught
YUP
Farcebook trying to convince everyone that Craigslist is unsafe (as if FB was safe) was one of the biggest scams ever.
Yes, it undermined CL stealing a bunch of the adverts, but it sure as hell made nobody more safe.
The kids in particular have figured out how to couch grifts in medical care and college tuition-- two outlets donors have no visibility into and cannot expect any sort of accountability for. Raising money and pretending to execute is how the scam generally goes since you can't verify anything.
Good faith is dead. Trust without transparency and you will be exploited.
If Meta was serious about their "real names" policy, this would be less of a problem.
Well obviously since those are the most used platforms. Interesting that a bank, which should be full of clever people, doesn't know to take MAUs into consideration when seeing which platforms produce more fraud.
From a utility standpoint, social media seems to have largely filled the same role email used to among distant family.
Really? Well I might be biased but all I see these days is people trying very, very hard to curate the perfect internet image of themselves.
Emphasis mine, as a reminder to be careful with absolutes. It's a bit of a stretch to suggest that nobody has become more self-centered due to social media.
I get why electronic communication is a boon but I am sometimes confused by folks who prefer a public communication medium for their private comms.
Boomers?
Also I'm not sure cancel culture is a bad thing. It's just negative branding for what is essentially the first time marginalized groups could have their voices heard. People who are used to writing op-eds and never hearing any criticism of their ideas are finally getting some negative feedback and they're super mad about it. You get absolutely unreal outrage about that, like this NYT opinion:
> For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.
That is the first sentence in the piece. Unreal. There has never been a right to say what you want without being shamed or shunned. Shaming and shunning is part of free speech. Boycotts are part of free speech.
That's how backwards this whole "cancel culture" outrage is. Better to call it accountability culture, or response culture, or feedback culture.
Scott Cawson, the creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, was doxxed, harassed, and had death threats issued against himself and his pregnant wife.
His crime against society? Being outed as a Republican political donor. Not a crime, just exercising his right to participate in democracy. His ability to do so was subsequently attacked and stripped from him by brave keyboard warriors.
Death threats are an actual crime. They are not free speech. Nobody's been held accountable for that though.
This is the problem with modern "equality" movements. They don't want parity at all. They just want to tilt things enough in their favor so they can be the ones doing the bullying.
There are laws about this. If they're difficult to enforce then somebody needs to make a decision about how much anonymity to allow on the internet, and other such difficult subjects. That's kind of the world we live in.
You realize that marginalized people get doxxed and have death threats made against them every single day, often multiple times per day, and nobody seems to hear about it? Because again, they're not famous or notable in any way, they have nobody to call up to write that op-ed or have their signal boosted. It doesn't make the threats to their lives less serious. They can't afford the "private security" that people often say they're getting in order to make their death threats seem more serious.
Are you interested in stopping such death threats in general on the internet? It's doable, but you'd have to make some sacrifices.
Almost like how you have to sacrifice being free from criticism if you really want free speech.
What exactly is your point here? I know what you're getting at but dare not invoke their name. Sure, "marginalized people" getting threatened is a problem. They're not exactly without a platform-- they're perfectly capable of coordinating on Twitter and elsewhere to attack and deplatform anybody that dares oppose them. One of the more contentious ones literally uses the exact term "signal boosting" to issue calls to arms. So they're not exactly powerless either. America's "marginalized people" are apparently more effective than the Ku Klux Klan, since they get to intimidate opposition while masquerading as victims who cannot be challenged, lest they stalk and attack everyone associated with you and cost you your livelihood. We won't kill you, we'll just isolate you from your entire support network to ensure you and your family starve to death. Such magnanimous treatment from the uwu innocent widdle victim peopurrs! Better think twice before you speak out!
This isn't equality, nor is it a matter of free speech or criticism-- advancing a political cause through intimidation, violence and fear is literally the textbook definition of Terrorism. I expect nothing less though; every red flag of fraud has been repurposed by a certain demographic as central to their "identity," so why not normalize terrorism as a means of discourse while we're at it? Biden insists it's inbred gun hoarders we need to be worried about-- because we meet so many of those on a daily basis. Meanwhile, I have to play wordsmith with every fucking character I post online or my wife and children face death/rape threats and I get bricks thrown through my windows. You know, all the fun stuff the KKK used to do to blacks in the 60s. Remember: the people throwing the bricks are the real victims, and don't you dare suggest otherwise or you're next. That's just criticism coming through the window, and nobody deserves protection from that.
Your idea of marginalized people is a lie-- misdirection at best. Anytime white men (always white men) start wearing dresses and seeking political power, they form a child-sex cult, a hate group, or both. I once bought into their bullshit, but there's no fooling me twice.
It's anybody who criticizes anybody. Women journalists in particular, BLM activists, climate change scientists. You realize there's been a wave of scientists who have left Twitter recently?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/14/climate-...
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/08/09/lex-scott-steps-down/
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ferguson-d...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/23/blm-activist-s...
I guess you're invoking something about trans people? I mean them too but honestly it's everybody.
That seems like an odd claim to make. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arrested+for+making+death+threats&...
> There has never been a right to say what you want without being shamed or shunned
So... when the marginalized groups start getting cancelled, do I get to say "well they don't have a right not to be shunned"?
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
We're living in a new McCarthyism.
After all the things that have happened to marginalized groups throughout history, mean tweets are worse?
We're all living by the sword and dying by the sword called free speech. Conservatives are boycotting Bud Light. That's their right.
The backwardness of all of this is that people keep going on cable news and writing op-eds about various subjects and when they get criticized, they call up their friends at the NYT and get their opinion blasted to millions of subscribers complaining about a nobody in the middle of Ohio who called them a jerk on Twitter and got 10k likes.
Is nobody else seeing how this is lopsided?
Personally, it has made me lose interest in my favorite outdoor activity i.e. hiking because of too many people showing up. Ex: I won't set foot on a trail on weekends[0].
Will you be blaming social media for their overcrowded trains too?
I'm assuming they've witnessed the changes first hand in that case.
Even I complain about my inability to be alone on a trail in CA, or struggling to find campsites, occasionally shaking my fist at social media for it.
But the linked images from India showing extreme overcrowding has far more to do with the population size than social media. When you have that many people, any little force generating focused interest is getting multiplied by a huge number.
You shouldn't deny India is overpopulated when riding a train there resembles a footclub cup match.
What is the definition of over-population? Over what area are you measuring it? Those train images are likely from just one city. There are other places where the trains just run like any other place.
We can split hairs about other places, and obviously lots of places have their population/crowding issues. The planet has a lot of people.
But India is just not useful as a data point for blaming social media for these phenomena because it's such an outlier. Practically anything informing the people of India of something somewhere of interest is going to generate a thundering herd of exceptional proportion. You don't need social media's help.
It’s the same in Ontario Canada, which can be frustrating.
But I am curious what activities are now missing all those people.
I always question what intention does someone have painting social media in such broad strokes. Especially when we consider who actively gains from narrowing where information can be accessed.
And the abundant information, is that really a good thing? How much of it is good? Remember the Trump election, the amount of outright lies thrown around and the level of polarization, with even family members unable to speak to each other.
I'm not saying there's nothing good at all between the mud, but on the whole I think it's been a disaster.
Small group to talk to family or friends? Great!
The local community? Begin noticing dbags and crazies, people nasty to each other
National or larger? Forget about it, and now it's ratfucked by bad actors, shills, foreign intel, and other ilk.
Moderation also gets worse because these large entities try to create blanket standards with such a wide variation of cultures involved.
It is all perspective and humans will use tools for good and bad. There is plenty of good in the world thanks to social media.
But, of course it created a bunch of good thing. Nothing that spreads that widely has only bad consequences. And yes, I like the good consequences quite a lot too. It's too bad most of the companies keeping those networks are adamant in destroying all the good value and keeping only the bad.
This reads like you trying to stand between me and my friends. If you don't like social media that's fine for you, but the rest of us quite like it and that's no business of yours. Butt out.