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>" targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually " In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad. But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe , when the internet was young and this was new. But i…
Interesting that a lot of data was stolen by call centre workers. Shows one of the perils of outsourcing abroad to incredibly impoverished countries.
>" targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually " In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad. But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe , when the internet was young and this was new. But i…
Scammer groups that have survived for this long got to hone their skills of manipulation and persuasion (and have the money to continue operations). We are all to a degree vulnerable to persuasion, and it used by scammers, but also businesses: "Temporarily free version of Microsoft 10. Get yours now! It's easy. 10 million people have already upgraded."
Older people have trusted phones for all their lives. They are more vulnerable to these than email scams. Locally there is now a scam involving people who dress up as home care, visit one hour before the real home care person, tell them they are the new replacement, then proceed to ransack the place for valuables. I could see myself falling victim to that.
They played on this old man's hope and financial worries ("greed" in less positive terms). Stories like these gravely sadden me. Hits close to home too: Both my father and mother were targeted, one over email (cloud backup scam), the other over the phone (helpdesk scam). I hope to build a product in the future to help combat these online and offline scams.
If I would say I expect real protection from police & court, I'll get laughed at these days.
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Yeah, all I can think of is why they didn't change their number? Or block that number from reaching their phone/alarming/whatever. Secondly if the guy was so unstable that he kept sending money why didn't his family intervene by taking away his ability to send money (most likely by closing his credit card or putting very low limit on it). It also surprises me that a person with such sever Alzheimer's was still allowe…
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Getting older is hard and when Alzheimer and dementia are in the early stages, before clearly identified people are vulnerable. What to do with people that can't make good decisions, or just aren't able to drive anymore.
Clearly keeping them away from firearms and removing financial access is a good idea. Those are hard but necessary discussions.
I get the IRS scam calls on my answering machine from time to time. Anoying. They've switched from the broken english to a computer voice.
>" targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually " In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad. But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe , when the internet was young and this was new. But i…
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And regarding the guy who committed suicide, don't you dare try to shift blame to his family for not limiting his access to money. Even if it were easy to do, which it isn't, the resentment his caretaker would have to deal with might well have been too much for her to bear, and his wife and family already had enough to bear just watching his mental capabilities fade away. Until you've watched it happen to a parent or spouse, you will not understand what the immediate family has to go through.