Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do
vox.com
vox.com
The problem is that spam/scams are actually a very good business and people being careful/suspicious online is bad for said business. Big companies (that people would normally not associate with shady activity, due to a mistaken belief that laws apply to big companies) are now taking part in the action with first-party spam/scams (ads, sponsored or "suggested" content) and doing everything possible to give a false sense of security to users so they drop their guard (or grow up to never have that guard to begin with).
Cue a group of 3 technicians at my front door, demanding first that i let them in, then that i pay 100 euros right here right now for their services that i had to do legally or i would face a fine. I looked up the service they were offering and it did seem to be an actual mandatory thing, but a government website mentionned that it normally cost 70 euros. I told them i felt too rushed and that they insisted too much, and that it didn't matter what the truth was, i wasn't paying them to do this. They left.
I later confirmed that they were telling the truth (though i have no way of verifying if they're accredited, i choose to believe that they are) with the management company. I still feel this tinge that you feel when you realize you've been scammed despite never giving them anything.
Sorry for rambling, just recounting how even when you show up in person i still feels like a scam. I find questioning the profit motive of persons that contact you very effective at weeding out scams.
Simply being polite and reasonable with scammers leaves afterwards draining emotional hole.
I suspect the real reason is that GenZ, unlike millennials, are not digital natives. They’re smartphone natives. And therefore App natives. And social media natives.
When they are actually on the internet, without the App guardrails, they are as lost as the boomers, except the boomers know they’re lost, but GenZ doesn’t, because they think of themselves as being good at the internet and technology.
In addition, if I think about the markers in a phishing email, it’s usually poor grammar, misspelled words, usage of emojis, etc.
But that’s literally how GenZ communicates today. It’s hard to tell a phishing email from a GenZ communication.
I know the OP was a provocation in that direction, but the art of good commenting (in HN's sense of the word good) involves not giving in to provocation.
Back in the days spam/scams would generally only be in user-generated-content areas like e-mail, IM, etc. You wouldn't have reputable websites or even your OS pass off scams as first-party trusted content.
Nowadays? Every consumer-grade app has ads that try hard to make it look as polished/legitimate/secure as possible, which any scammer with a big enough wallet can take advantage of.
It's not just grammar/misspelt words/etc, it's also that technology evolved to intentionally give scammers more avenues to make their scams look much more polished and official.
Dopamine addicted lunatics who absorb with the same diligence content, ads, product placement, and propaganda. The only content ever created by them will be photo or a short video made on a smartphone. Funnily it's only the last decade during which one could become a smartphone native.
Every generation has a bunch of dumb, inexperienced, and/or naive people, and just because they use the internet a lot doesn’t mean they’re good at it.