> It’s hard to understand how someone could fall for this scam… if a loved one was having an emergency of some kind I would expect them to call rather than text, and I would respond with a call either way to discuss the details.
I think elderly are more vulnerable to this, because they get scared and want to help.
My elderly mother fell victim to a "microsoft" and "paypal" technician calling her twice, despite my training her on how not to pick up the phone from these calls and going over how nobody from these companies would ever call her. She got nervous and scared and basically did whatever the scammers told her because she thought something was wrong with her computer.
Now after it's happened twice :she has been reminded not to answer any calls from number she doesn't know. But she still gets nervous she is going to miss something important from health insurance or doctors office so she is still tempted to pick up spam calls.
It's tough, no matter how much I train her she will still want to answer and "help" the scammer. They keep doing this because it works.
I need to just lock her phone down so all callers not in her contact list go to a voicemail I screen. :-/