211–220 of 265 posts
African scammers used to be small scale or lone wolf type of operations. You had scammers like Hushpuppi etc who become celebrities John Gotti style. Now the Chinese have taken over , they are moving from places like Malaysia and setting up these huge scam compounds , they combine the legitimate businesses (construction, import/export) with gambling and these crypto, mobile money and pig butchering scams. This is onl…
While he was still living on his own, my grandfather struggled with people sending him scam letters in the mail. He sent a meaningful amount of money to obvious scams despite being a shrewd businessman all his life. AI will take these cons to another level. Is there any way to help the elderly navigate this shift?
Their returns are not spectacular and they charge fees but overall they are net positive on returns.
My sister and I were discussing if this was a great idea for him and she pointed out:
"Really, he needs someone he can call to send a check somewhere or send a digital payment and he just calls them and they make it happen."
Ideally, there would be a more generic service that would do this for the elderly. It would be the financial version of those "senior phones" that have big buttons and a "help" button that connects you to a person.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone who is as unpopular as Elon the cringelord Musk can convince the markets that Tesla is worth its current stock price, I doubt the AI bubble will burst.
People buying shares at a given price does not necessarily mean they believe the company is worth that much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory
African scammers used to be small scale or lone wolf type of operations. You had scammers like Hushpuppi etc who become celebrities John Gotti style. Now the Chinese have taken over , they are moving from places like Malaysia and setting up these huge scam compounds , they combine the legitimate businesses (construction, import/export) with gambling and these crypto, mobile money and pig butchering scams. This is onl…
African scammers used to be small scale or lone wolf type of operations. You had scammers like Hushpuppi etc who become celebrities John Gotti style. Now the Chinese have taken over , they are moving from places like Malaysia and setting up these huge scam compounds , they combine the legitimate businesses (construction, import/export) with gambling and these crypto, mobile money and pig butchering scams. This is onl…
Why do you call them “labs”?
While he was still living on his own, my grandfather struggled with people sending him scam letters in the mail. He sent a meaningful amount of money to obvious scams despite being a shrewd businessman all his life. AI will take these cons to another level. Is there any way to help the elderly navigate this shift?
My elderly father uses a financial planner/wealth management firm. Their returns are not spectacular and they charge fees but overall they are net positive on returns. My sister and I were discussing if this was a great idea for him and she pointed out: "Really, he needs someone he can call to send a check somewhere or send a digital payment and he just calls them and they make it happen." Ideally, there would be a m…
My parents are not yet a concern for this stuff, but I imagine eventually they might be.
So I would get a notification on my phone to approve the transaction/withdrawal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, not really. The problem is that often the scams are symptoms of a larger problem. The elderly still want autonomy, and the scams adapt and change faster than education can get most of the elderly caught up to the risks. That's entirely removed from the technical aspects, which are a whole other level of education on risk. Scams always will move faster than defenders and efforts to block them. All of which a…
so the solution in this brave new world is to preemptively fill the gap with benevolent chatbot penpals?
The solution is that in the West, many Boomers are isolated from their families because many of us move for work or college. Get them some friends, a community, a local shuffleboard group or something so they're not so desperate for any connection that they answer every phone call and email with desperation.
While he was still living on his own, my grandfather struggled with people sending him scam letters in the mail. He sent a meaningful amount of money to obvious scams despite being a shrewd businessman all his life. AI will take these cons to another level. Is there any way to help the elderly navigate this shift?
As it stands right now, no. Luckily, at least for now, I'm tech savvy enough to navigate it. But the 100, mostly immigrant, elderly residents of my building will not be so lucky.
Two months ago I learned, during a water outage on a Saturday morning, that my building's new assistant manager was an AI bot from EliseAI. What was an actual emergency, it thought, was something that could be dealt with the following week. It told me that management would respond on Monday, which is completely unacceptable during an emergency water outage. I had no water for 3 days & on Monday the actual human manager waffled on why it wasn't immediately fixed & thought it was cute (he giggled & got excited) that I discovered that the assistant manager was now an AI bot.
And just yesterday, I got an unsolicited text from an unknown number that looks exactly like a phishing scam attempt, except that it was sent by the assistant manager AI bot. The text said that I had $130 in unpaid rent & had links to remedy it. WHAT?!! First, it's illegal in CA to give a tenant notice that way. Second, it looked exactly like a phishing scam attempt. I obviously didn't click the links, but I did parse them & found that they belonged to EliseAI. This also happened a month after the human manager gave out a notice about back rent that I had already asked about. He told me I had $0.00 debt on the books. So why the AI bot phishing attempt?
I perused EliseAI's privacy policy and there is no way that I will be knowingly feeding any PII into it.
I haven't tracked down the manager yet to give him a piece of my mind. But in what world is this kind of activity OK? How are non-tech savvy folks going to survive these things? Especially the large non-English speaking elderly population in my building. As far as I can see (I live in SF & am surrounded by it), we're doomed.
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It would be great if not for the fact that at least over here in the UK your doctor or anyone from the NHS will always call you from a restricted number. So especially if you're elderly and have regular check ups or anything medical going on, the advice to "only answer known numbers" falls apart. And in my experience NHS receptionists have zero patience for the whole "tell me why you're calling" automated screens too…
Yeah, I think thats a valid edge case - and a manageable one. If you are expecting a call from a doctor, lift the firewall for a while.