I think we should treat people who get scammed and come out and talk about it like heroes. And this is important: no matter how "obvious" the scam might seem in retrospect or from the outside of the community it prey'd on.
The more I look at scams the more I think this is major factor in how they keep going and keep coming back.
I totally agree, shame only helps the scammers. But I'm not optimistic that less shame would majorly impact scam industries.
They either operate from anonymity, or impunity. Or both.
Like, in theory, cold calls are forbidden in Europe. Yet they happen regularely, and they are not hunted down and punished. Now often with AI bots from outside countries.
My mother, who is a bit unfocused in the evenings, was scammed by at the door salesmen from a #Telekom subcontractor. They didn't follow any of the rules (like a written contract). Luckily she talked about it, and we revoked in time. But cancelling that scam contract meant she lost her phone number. The one she had for decads.
My father got scammed by #Targobank. He had some debit card debts, and wanted them moved to his loan. The loan had a partial expires-on-death clause. He wanted that to be a full one. They moved the debt, but removed the expires-on-death clause on the loan, and put the clause on the now even bank account.
We only found out after his death, and we had to read the fine print twice.
(And since we refused the heritage, we are no longer a party in this issue.)
One scam that got me was Steam account phishing. A friend sent me a message to vote for their clan on some online contest. There was a fake "authorize Steam API" screen, which I stupidly filled out with my Steam credentials. My Steam account passed the scam message to my contacts (and hid the users so this wouldn't show up to me).
Luckily, quite a few of the folks involved are in a chat group, and some asked back about it. I could change credentials and warn before more happened.
The point I'm trying to make with the last one:
- Scams are comparably easy once they are inside a circle of trust
- Scams profit from an abundant and indistinct password culture. If you have to enter your one set of credentials everywhere for everything, it's hard to stay focused. At least for me.
- A lot of online phishing seems to work via a huge number of attempts. They are anonymous and don't worry about reputation.
myrmepropagandist
Billiglarper