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(Fox 31 Denver)   Seniors fall for online scams more often than teens. Strike that. Reverse it   (kdvr.com) divider line
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    More: Interesting, Phishing, Education, Government, Internet, IPhone, Credit card, Student loan, Internet fraud  
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1707 clicks; posted to Main » on 07 Feb 2023 at 6:35 PM (7 weeks ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



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AirForceVet [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-07 5:12:55 PM  
Jesus, those poor kids. And I thought I got a lot of spam calls, texts and emails because I'm old.

They must get saturated with crap.
 
Begoggle
2023-02-07 6:38:28 PM  
Not what the article says.
The article says the rate increased faster for teens.
If you even believe that to be true.
 
Tom Marvolo Bombadil
2023-02-07 6:42:09 PM  
But which are worse at driving?
 
Claude Ballse
2023-02-07 6:42:39 PM  
I've done enough time in call centers in my younger years to *almost* sympathize with scammers in the sense that I hate dealing with old people with whom I have to simultaneously educate about technology which they're actively resistant to, while also trying to get a task done that is dependent upon their fleeting comprehension & cooperation.

And that's not even considering how over the years we've placed more of an emphasis on educating the elderly against scammers while ignoring young people who we assume are naturally savvy enough to fend for themselves simply because technology is involved.
 
Toxophil
2023-02-07 6:42:54 PM  
That include roblox account jacking? Because I'd bet that's a huge outlier in the data.

/drtfa
 
Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 6:43:04 PM  
This article didn't s bullshi... Oh!  Look!!  Let's do something stupid!!!
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
SBinRR [OhFark]
2023-02-07 6:43:22 PM  
Most old people won't spend money without a senior citizen discount and double coupons.
 
Fark_Guy_Rob
2023-02-07 6:44:12 PM  

AirForceVet: Jesus, those poor kids. And I thought I got a lot of spam calls, texts and emails because I'm old.

They must get saturated with crap.


ChatGPT and others are going to crank this up to 11. It won't be generic spam, but it will be professional sounding, uniquely written spam about a job opportunity in your area, referencing your online profile. Or details from some social media account.

And they respond with perfectly legit, professional messages.

And that person they've been talking to on some messageboard for the last N years is just an AI designed to be a pal, but also recommend/hype up products. Basically 'influencers' but far more fake, and far more personal.
 
Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 6:44:47 PM  

Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen: This article didn't s bullshi... Oh!  Look!!  Let's do something stupid!!!
[Fark user image image 400x400]


Dear Fark,

"is" =/= "didn't s"

Your friend,
Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen
 
Palined Parenthood [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 6:47:18 PM  
WELL MAY BE IF THEY STOPPED PLAYING FARM VILL......PUT DOWN THERE I-PHONE'S FOR 1 MINUTE.....AND LEARNED TO BALANCE CHECK AND SIGN CURESIVE.....KID ARE SO SOFT THESE DAY'S.....DREW DID YOU LIKE MY BEER CHICKEN CASERROLE.....THANK YOU LOVE FRED
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
kukukupo
2023-02-07 6:48:19 PM  
Hardly surprising if you have worked with kids in the last 5-10 years.

Generally speaking they have no computer skills.  If it doesn't exist as an app on a phone they aren't using it.
 
LurkerSupreme [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-07 6:48:22 PM  
But that random Asian chick on Whatsapp with the sexy profile pic that texted me out of the blue said that she loved me, I just had to send her $1k in iTunes gift cards so she could buy a plane ticket to come meet me. Are you telling me that was a lie?
 
Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 6:50:42 PM  

LurkerSupreme: But that random Asian chick on Whatsapp with the sexy profile pic that texted me out of the blue said that she loved me, I just had to send her $1k in iTunes gift cards so she could buy a plane ticket to come meet me. Are you telling me that was a lie?


I think you dropped your profile picture...
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Toxophil
2023-02-07 6:51:05 PM  

Tom Marvolo Bombadil: But which are worse at driving?


Based on consequences, I'd say teens.
Granny might piss a lot of people off going 15 under the speed limit with her blinker on, but teens do some seriously reckless shiat.

I've personally seen accidents resulting from both, but the teen's was worse.
Ran a stoplight speeding and went mostly head-on into someone turning left.
Naturally, the car was packed with the idiot's friends.
 
jso2897 [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 6:51:52 PM  

Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen: This article didn't s bullshi... Oh!  Look!!  Let's do something stupid!!!
[Fark user image 400x400]


But how could an article about the totally legitimate, real, and profoundly significant "Generation" issue possibly be false and stupid?
 
jso2897 [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 6:54:32 PM  
Don't kid yourself - ANYBODY can be conned.
Young, old, smart, stupid, educated, ignorant, me, you. ANYBODY.
The first thing any good grifter does is convince his mark that he';s too smart to be taken.
 
Mouser
2023-02-07 6:57:19 PM  
You don't get to be a senior by falling prey to stupid scams, son.
 
skrewewe
2023-02-07 6:58:22 PM  
Teens than often more scams online for fall seniors.
 
Gordon Bennett [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-07 7:00:37 PM  

kukukupo: Hardly surprising if you have worked with kids in the last 5-10 years.

Generally speaking they have no computer skills.  If it doesn't exist as an app on a phone they aren't using it.


It's the in between people who have the computer skills. The ones who had to LOAD"*",8,1 to play a game. Young enough to pick up computer skills easily, old enough to have done so when you needed to know what you were doing in order to do literally anything.

It may have been a pain to manually configure Trumpet Winsock or edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, but once you did you had a pretty good idea about how the underlying technology worked.

Fark user imageView Full Size


Fark user imageView Full Size


Fark user imageView Full Size
 
mr0x
2023-02-07 7:02:07 PM  
Seniors are mostly teens.

I mean high school seniors are 17 and 18. If you're a senior older than that then you're already failing for a lot more than online scams.
 
lizyrd
2023-02-07 7:06:07 PM  
Teens are often naive, combined with the self-assuredness that comes along with knowing everything, so they are an extremely easy demographic to con.  Most learn their lesson by 20 and develop a healthy suspicion of things that appear too good to be true which lasts through their 50s. Then their cognitive function begins to decline and they are easier to confuse, often too proud to ask for advice, and sometimes even too proud to tell anyone when they figure out they got scammed. Or worried that if their kids find out they will take their keys/take their finances over/put them in a home/insert other loss of freedom.
 
dywed88
2023-02-07 7:07:18 PM  
Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.comView Full Size
 
Lars The Canadian Viking
2023-02-07 7:10:54 PM  

dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]


Stubby got scammed?.. or he scammed us all?

Everyone in the thread believed him.
 
hegelsghost
2023-02-07 7:16:11 PM  
This is disturbing as I had hoped that given all the misinformation the younger generation would be more savvy about it, at least in the political sphere. Otherwise we we doomed.  Then again maybe realizing children do not poop in liter boxes at school requires less intellectual effort than the semblance of credibility a real scammer can produce.
 
My Second Fark Account
2023-02-07 7:20:24 PM  
If you click through you'll realize that this rather terrible article misrepresented (asserted incorrect information about) a statistic taken from an advertisement or SEO page (masquerading as research) for a paid reverse lookup product. Ahhhh modern journalism.
 
wildcardjack
2023-02-07 7:20:35 PM  
The old have seen all the basic scams, and the young are seeing new scams that don't even aim at seniors because there's a culture gap. The key, of course, is to shell your scam well enough it's hard to prosecute you.
 
Sexy Jesus
2023-02-07 7:22:02 PM  
To be fair, have you ever tried to explain CashApp to a senior citizen?
 
MythDragon
2023-02-07 7:23:01 PM  

Gordon Bennett: kukukupo: Hardly surprising if you have worked with kids in the last 5-10 years.

Generally speaking they have no computer skills.  If it doesn't exist as an app on a phone they aren't using it.

It's the in between people who have the computer skills. The ones who had to LOAD"*",8,1 to play a game. Young enough to pick up computer skills easily, old enough to have done so when you needed to know what you were doing in order to do literally anything.

It may have been a pain to manually configure Trumpet Winsock or edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, but once you did you had a pretty good idea about how the underlying technology worked.

[Fark user image image 520x300]

[Fark user image image 636x412]

[Fark user image image 602x368]


Omg, all the memories of having different autoexecs to squeeze out just enough memory to get certain games to load (damn, this one is 1k too short, let me try autoexec #3) have just come flooding back.

The good old days of IRQ conflicts and DMA settings. Back then if you wanted to play a game, by gosh, you had to earn it. Oh you wanted sound in your game? Too damn bad, your CDROM drive is conflicting. You can always install to the HDD and disconnect  the CD...but too bad you only have a 300MB HDD so I guess you can't.

Kids today have it so easy with playing and plugging, with no respect for what it was like to spend 4 hours dicking around with HIMEM just to be able to play Betrayal at Krondor.
 
hegelsghost
2023-02-07 7:23:07 PM  
I may have my numbers wrong, but is this the same subway line they were building or going to start to build in the 70s and 80s?
 
hegelsghost
2023-02-07 7:26:57 PM  
Oops!
 
Feel_the_velvet
2023-02-07 7:28:55 PM  
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
SBinRR [OhFark]
2023-02-07 7:28:55 PM  

hegelsghost: Oops!


If you send me $5.00 I can move your post to the right thread.
 
Fark_Guy_Rob
2023-02-07 7:35:57 PM  

dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]


That's true. But that's not the claim.

A new study found tech-savvy teens are falling for online scams at a higher rate than seniors.
 
hlehmann
2023-02-07 7:40:58 PM  

Gordon Bennett: kukukupo: Hardly surprising if you have worked with kids in the last 5-10 years.

Generally speaking they have no computer skills.  If it doesn't exist as an app on a phone they aren't using it.

It's the in between people who have the computer skills. The ones who had to LOAD"*",8,1 to play a game. Young enough to pick up computer skills easily, old enough to have done so when you needed to know what you were doing in order to do literally anything.

It may have been a pain to manually configure Trumpet Winsock or edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, but once you did you had a pretty good idea about how the underlying technology worked.

[Fark user image 520x300]

[Fark user image 636x412]

[Fark user image 602x368]


I'll be 65 in a matter of weeks, which I guess makes me a senior.  You kids with your config.sys had it easy.  I had to toggle in a boot loader in order to read the program that would start the paper tape reader that loaded the actual program I wanted to run.  Any network that existed between computers was a 20mA current loop at best.
 
vudukungfu [TotalFark]
2023-02-07 7:50:25 PM  
Us olds know what a turnip truck looks like
 
dywed88
2023-02-07 7:50:39 PM  

Fark_Guy_Rob: dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]

That's true. But that's not the claim.

A new study found tech-savvy teens are falling for online scams at a higher rate than seniors.


Age 15-20 is about 20 million
Ages 65 plus is about 65 million

So if the scams average about the same amount, far fewer teenagers are falling for them.

The rate at which teenagers lose mooney has increased faster than seniors. But in terms of how much is being lost etc, seniors appear to still dominate.
 
Drunk and Bitter Jesus [OhFark]
2023-02-07 7:59:02 PM  

Mouser: You don't get to be a senior by falling prey to stupid scams, son.


Counterpoint:

pacificpundit.comView Full Size
 
sex_and_drugs_for_ian [BareFark]
2023-02-07 8:14:31 PM  
The FBI announced a dramatic increase in "Sextortion" plots. Scammers pose as attractive females on social media, send nude photos and ask for the same in return. Once received, the victim is told if he does not send money, the photo will be sent to all his friends and family

Fark user imageView Full Size


"And then he said to send him money, and now I don't know what to doooo!"
 
morg
2023-02-07 8:29:29 PM  
They think if they can program a VCR they know everything.
 
geggy
2023-02-07 8:40:32 PM  

dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]


The prince of Nigeria keeps getting richer and richer.
 
Fark_Guy_Rob
2023-02-07 8:41:35 PM  

dywed88: Fark_Guy_Rob: dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]

That's true. But that's not the claim.

A new study found tech-savvy teens are falling for online scams at a higher rate than seniors.

Age 15-20 is about 20 million
Ages 65 plus is about 65 million

So if the scams average about the same amount, far fewer teenagers are falling for them.

The rate at which teenagers lose mooney has increased faster than seniors. But in terms of how much is being lost etc, seniors appear to still dominate.


It feels like you are conflating three different things...

1 - The total amount lost.

2 - The rate at which the groups fall victim to scams.

3 - The change/increase in teens falling victim.

The summary/study claims that (1) the elderly lost the most. You agree with that. The summary also says (3)ish, and you seem to agree with that.

But it also says (2) and you've just said it has to be wrong because of your assumption that elderly and teens would lose about the same.

So if the scams average about the same amount, far fewer teenagers are falling for them.

That could be true. But it might not be. It seems weird to trust the rest of the study but reject this one finding, especially if the justification is just a hypothetical you think sounds good.

The number of scams the age groups experience might be drastically different and the amounts lost might be drastically different. But again, without a better study or a compelling reason to doubt them, why would we disagree with it.

There are lots of other data points that largely agree with this. It's not exactly an unusual position.

Example:
ftc.govView Full Size

The loss reports per million don't say anything about the totals lost. But it does support the articles claim.

And this

In 2021, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z young adults (ages 18-59) were 34% more likely than older adults (ages 60 and over) to report losing money to fraud

I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your position.
 
Russ1642
2023-02-07 9:24:32 PM  
It can't be much harder to pull crypto scams on kids than the usual scams they pull on seniors.
 
trialpha
2023-02-07 9:34:22 PM  

sex_and_drugs_for_ian: The FBI announced a dramatic increase in "Sextortion" plots. Scammers pose as attractive females on social media, send nude photos and ask for the same in return. Once received, the victim is told if he does not send money, the photo will be sent to all his friends and family


I imagine this isn't a scam that would work all that well on the elderly.
 
Frederf
2023-02-07 10:15:14 PM  

Fark_Guy_Rob: dywed88: Fark_Guy_Rob: dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]

That's true. But that's not the claim.

A new study found tech-savvy teens are falling for online scams at a higher rate than seniors.

Age 15-20 is about 20 million
Ages 65 plus is about 65 million

So if the scams average about the same amount, far fewer teenagers are falling for them.

The rate at which teenagers lose mooney has increased faster than seniors. But in terms of how much is being lost etc, seniors appear to still dominate.

It feels like you are conflating three different things...

1 - The total amount lost.

2 - The rate at which the groups fall victim to scams.

3 - The change/increase in teens falling victim.

The summary/study claims that (1) the elderly lost the most. You agree with that. The summary also says (3)ish, and you seem to agree with that.

But it also says (2) and you've just said it has to be wrong because of your assumption that elderly and teens would lose about the same.

So if the scams average about the same amount, far fewer teenagers are falling for them.

That could be true. But it might not be. It seems weird to trust the rest of the study but reject this one finding, especially if the justification is just a hypothetical you think sounds good.

The number of scams the age groups experience might be drastically different and the amounts lost might be drastically different. But again, without a better study or a compelling reason to doubt them, why would we disagree with it.

There are lots of other data points that largely agree with this. It's not exactly an unusual position.

Example:
[ftc.gov image 850x850]
The loss reports per million don't say anything about the totals lost. But it does support the articles claim.

And this

In 2021, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z young adults (ages 18-59) were 34% more likely than older adults (ages 60 and over) to report losing money to fraud

I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your position.


You're at least thinking right. There's the amount, the rate, and the rate of change of the rate.

e.g. $1M, $20/capita, $+0.5/capita per year
 
ansius
2023-02-07 10:20:24 PM  
from the original report: https://socialcatfish.com/scamfish/state-of-internet-scams-2022/
scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.comView Full Size

scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.comView Full Size


USA demographics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States ):

% population under 25 = 31%
% population between 55-65 = 12.9%
% population older than 65 = 16.8%

I'm just going to halve the 20-29 group and say $ lost under 25 = $316 million
I'm going to assume that less than half the 55-65 group are 60-65 and say that 6% of the pop are 60-65
So roughly 23% of pop are 60+

so 31% of the population lost $316 million.
and 23% of the population lost $1,680 million.

And that's not accounting for time spent online.
 
raygundan
2023-02-07 10:42:49 PM  

Fark_Guy_Rob: AirForceVet: Jesus, those poor kids. And I thought I got a lot of spam calls, texts and emails because I'm old.

They must get saturated with crap.

ChatGPT and others are going to crank this up to 11. It won't be generic spam, but it will be professional sounding, uniquely written spam about a job opportunity in your area, referencing your online profile. Or details from some social media account.

And they respond with perfectly legit, professional messages.

And that person they've been talking to on some messageboard for the last N years is just an AI designed to be a pal, but also recommend/hype up products. Basically 'influencers' but far more fake, and far more personal.


Generic, obvious spam is (was?) a feature. Only idiots fall for it, which means they're not going to figure it out five steps later while the scam unfolds. Better spam means you catch some non-idiots, and the labor-intensive part of the scam is handling them after they bite. Too many of those and it's not worth the effort of spending three days talking them through a bank transfer or whatever.

But I suppose the bot can run more of the con now, so maybe the old rules will shift too.
 
raygundan
2023-02-07 10:44:09 PM  

Miss_Dorothy_Kilgallen: LurkerSupreme: But that random Asian chick on Whatsapp with the sexy profile pic that texted me out of the blue said that she loved me, I just had to send her $1k in iTunes gift cards so she could buy a plane ticket to come meet me. Are you telling me that was a lie?

I think you dropped your profile picture...
[Fark user image image 425x425]


Son, I am dissapoint.
 
raygundan
2023-02-07 10:58:58 PM  

dywed88: Fark_Guy_Rob: dywed88: Subby, $1.68 billion is a lot more than $101 million.

[scamfishcdn.socialcatfish.com image 850x234]

That's true. But that's not the claim.

A new study found tech-savvy teens are falling for online scams at a higher rate than seniors.

Age 15-20 is about 20 million
Ages 65 plus is about 65 million

So if the scams average about the same amount, far fewer teenagers are falling for them.

The rate at which teenagers lose mooney has increased faster than seniors. But in terms of how much is being lost etc, seniors appear to still dominate.


They're teens. I'd be astonished if the scams averaged the same amount.
 
LesserEvil [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2023-02-07 11:00:50 PM  
Well, I was beginning to feel left out.... oh, I get most of those crappy scams... "delivery issues" ... "amazon account compromised" ... "you've won a water heater" .... but until half an hour ago, I never got the "wrong number text" scam.
Fark user imageView Full Size

This is "Erin" from Arizona (or that was the area code... a couple thousand miles away from me) supposedly trying to call "Tony". To their credit, they only sent a few more texts after I responded bluntly "Nope" to the "are u Tony?" question.

So I'm guessing "she" chats up the mark, eventually weaseling money from the mark to buy a plane ticket to see the mark or something?

I'd like to think these scams are pretty weak sauce, but there apparently are a lot of horny morons out there falling for this crap.
 
Amoment
2023-02-07 11:15:25 PM  
2. They call you from a number u x know
1. Someone wants money.
4. You are the mark.
3. Be smarter
 
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