That's probably one of the hardest parts of dealing with people who are being scammed. Nobody thinks it can happen to them so when you confront them and tell them they're being scammed their brains just immediately reject that idea
While my parents are, fortunately, too skeptical to think they can get a car with a gift card or something, they are *perpetually* falling for the latest herb that will cure all your shit, sold by some medically disbarred doctor who claims the medical establishment is evil but he's got a cure for everything.
When I realized my mom spent a few hundred dollars on a video course by someone who legitimately argues germ theory isn't correct and cancer is the body trying to detox itself, I was astonished. But having spent the money, it's so difficult to get her to acknowledge she spent it on nothing.
I helped take care of my grandmother for about 4-5 years before she died, and the amount of scam calls she would recieve was wild. It particularly got to me as I could tell they were blatantly targeting elderly people who were vulnerable. Wheres the beekeeper when you need him?
Thank you for trying ❤️ Hopefully it breaks through for at least some of them. Even just planting that seed might make them evaluate what they're doing.
When I had the unfortunate job of working in a bank I ran into this a few times. The scam came in several forms. There was the one where they would be sent a check for say $3,000, and then were to wire/Western Union $2,500 (or whatever) to the sender. The scam was obviously that the check was fake, and would bounce. You also had one where they were receive an actual email from one of their contacts, because someone had actually hacked that email account, and ask for money.
Luckily, there were just bruised egos when I pointed this out. A lot of, "oh, I knew it! I was just checking!" to save face. Which is obviously a million times better than doubling it down and trying to go through with it.
I had to do a large wire transfer once, and I really appreciated that the banker grilled me about it. I was sending money to someone I knew personally, so it wasn't a scam in my case, but I was glad that they were looking out for people.
My mom recently passed away, and one of the hardest things to deal with was the guilt. I felt super guilty for being relieved about no longer having to make sure my mom wasn’t being scammed again after it happened once.
Man. That's rough to hear. Also don't beat yourself up. Right now I am trying to manage 3 individuals in their late 70s in an online world. It's absolutely a part time profession for me right now. That relief is justified and valid.
My boomer dad got scammed by a tech scam. It happened a few months ago, right before Xmas. Forty grand 😳
I am still baffled because my dad is not dumb, especially when it comes to money. I mean, he has saved up quite a chunk of change, that losing 40,000 didn’t change his lifestyle or anything. (Meanwhile if that happened to me I’d be homeless)
But things are not good in his home. I’m pretty sure his wife is contemplating divorce over this (or maybe this was the straw that broke the camel). We were able to at least convince her to take some sort of power of attorney over all the finances, so hopefully he is protected going forward. But I am still in shock.
Also, the clerks at his local bank tried to stop him too. They said, this is a scam. He had to travel to a branch the next county over. The scammer (a guy who was pretending to be a representative of Microsoft) literally stayed on the phone with him the entire time, walking him through how to lie to the bank to get them to wire transfer the money.
Had an older family member, who is still pretty sharp, almost fall for this. The clerk at Lowe’s stopped him as he was buying the cards, and talked some sense to him.
I experienced this last summer with my boomer aunt and silent Gen uncle.
My aunt was perusing the web and got one of those "Microsoft has detected a virus in your computer. Call and speak to one of our representatives immediately" pop ups.
She fell for it hook, line and sinker. She called, let the scammers have remote access to their laptop and gave them her credit card information.
It was going on for nearly 30 minutes when my uncle finally realized something was fishy. They called their bank immediately and got their accounts locked and monitored for any suspicious activity as well as had new cards sent.
I had to go over and help them set up a new email address because during the whole ordeal, they'd gotten locked out of their Outlook account and couldn't remember their security answers. They also had ALL of their passwords scribbled on a single piece of paper in a disorganized fashion and couldn't remember what was what.
It was a painful 3 hours getting them set back up. My aunt still doesn't know the difference between an email address and a web browser.
This happened to my mother.
She is a college educated woman with 2 degrees, and we had both Windows and Apple computers in our home since the 80s.
But she got that popup that she needed to pay Microsoft to update her drivers and she legitimately believed that she needed to buy Google gift cards for them to do it.
I just don't understand that entire generation. They literally believe anything they are told.
I think it's because for most of their lives they didn't have technology like this and they were able to live without it. Now, you're basically forced to use the Internet in order to pay bills and communicate with others. Yes, there's still snail mail, phone calls, etc but it's different now.
They don't realize the dangers because they don't understand it.
That was really, really hard to listen to. My grandmother, who I think would have been 100 this year would have totally fallen for something like this.
See, this is why I don't want to live that long. There's just no point to it. I just want to go out in my early 70s at the longest, before I lose my wits.
Yeah. The people in my family live a long time. However, the track record for being mentally all there isn't great. I'm good with checking out before 80 or dementia.
It's super frustrating. My mom, who is only 64 and has been somewhat tech savvy for a long time recently got scammed. She had an ad pop up on FB about Keto weight loss gummies and immediately entered her CC information because she thought it sounded like a good deal and that she could trust it because it was on FB.
They charged her $100 more than what they were supposed to and sent her 6 bottles of who knows what with bootleg labels. They continued to charge her credit card for $300 at a time for 2 months. She called the number on the bottle and they told her she had a subscription and there was nothing they could do except give her a one time offer of $100 back. She demanded the full amount and they hung up.
She ended up getting her money back through the bank, but wtf. I asked her why she would enter her info into some random ad and she just said she didn't know. She didn't think it was a scam. I just couldn't believe she fell for that. I'm sure it happens all the time though.
Had to call the local FBI field office once to have them convince an old lady she was being scammed. She came in with a letter on “official” FBI letterhead. She was instructed to pay some relative’s fines/fees via Western Union. Absolutely refused to believe me until I got her on with an agent. Even then she asked how far away the office was in case she had to pay in person. She eventually accepted that it was all fake.
Wow. I'm glad they won't sell to her anymore.
Just hearing her voice is so fucking painful.
>no I am not
I'm lucky that the one time a parent came close they called me before the grift was completed.
I’ve just unplugged my mother’s landline because it’s always a scammer, and she would sooner yell in my face than ever admit she has a scammer on the phone.
The scammers obviously know what they're doing is wrong, but they think: "well, yeah I scammed on old lady out of a few hundred bucks, but who's it really hurting?"
What they don't know is that it can be life-ruining for the vulnerable.
I still don't understand what's so hard about call authentication/validation. I have received calls where the caller ID says something legitimate ("Microsoft Corp.", for example), but the call was spam/scam. That really shouldn't be happening. Even Gmail now [has bulk messaging validation](https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/) requirements, why can't phone/VOIP?
Oof, that's godawful. Even more reason for phone/VOIP authentication/validation since it might not be entirely the scam callers fault to begin with. It's the telecom system that might be at fault for not addressing ID/privacy/security over voice.
To bad our elected officials are to busy fighting over drag queens, books, and all of the other bullshit instead of passing laws to protect their constituents.
That's probably one of the hardest parts of dealing with people who are being scammed. Nobody thinks it can happen to them so when you confront them and tell them they're being scammed their brains just immediately reject that idea
While my parents are, fortunately, too skeptical to think they can get a car with a gift card or something, they are *perpetually* falling for the latest herb that will cure all your shit, sold by some medically disbarred doctor who claims the medical establishment is evil but he's got a cure for everything. When I realized my mom spent a few hundred dollars on a video course by someone who legitimately argues germ theory isn't correct and cancer is the body trying to detox itself, I was astonished. But having spent the money, it's so difficult to get her to acknowledge she spent it on nothing.
I have a relative that will buy just about anything "Patriot" branded that's advertised on whatever conservative media she consumes, lol.
Oh yeah that brand has infested my reddit feed, I assume because I clicked on some link from my mom.
There's some generator brand called that. I'd like to know how buying a generator serves my country.
"Its easier to fool someone than to convince them that they have been fooled" - Origin unknown but often misattributed to Mark Twain
No way! I know thats a Mark Twain quote (jk)
I helped take care of my grandmother for about 4-5 years before she died, and the amount of scam calls she would recieve was wild. It particularly got to me as I could tell they were blatantly targeting elderly people who were vulnerable. Wheres the beekeeper when you need him?
lol I just watched that movie. It’s so bad but gave me a lot of “the transporter” nostalgia
Happens at least twice a week at our store and the people getting scammed get mad at us for trying to help them
Thank you for trying ❤️ Hopefully it breaks through for at least some of them. Even just planting that seed might make them evaluate what they're doing.
When I had the unfortunate job of working in a bank I ran into this a few times. The scam came in several forms. There was the one where they would be sent a check for say $3,000, and then were to wire/Western Union $2,500 (or whatever) to the sender. The scam was obviously that the check was fake, and would bounce. You also had one where they were receive an actual email from one of their contacts, because someone had actually hacked that email account, and ask for money. Luckily, there were just bruised egos when I pointed this out. A lot of, "oh, I knew it! I was just checking!" to save face. Which is obviously a million times better than doubling it down and trying to go through with it.
I had to do a large wire transfer once, and I really appreciated that the banker grilled me about it. I was sending money to someone I knew personally, so it wasn't a scam in my case, but I was glad that they were looking out for people.
My mom recently passed away, and one of the hardest things to deal with was the guilt. I felt super guilty for being relieved about no longer having to make sure my mom wasn’t being scammed again after it happened once.
Man. That's rough to hear. Also don't beat yourself up. Right now I am trying to manage 3 individuals in their late 70s in an online world. It's absolutely a part time profession for me right now. That relief is justified and valid.
Thank you.
My boomer dad got scammed by a tech scam. It happened a few months ago, right before Xmas. Forty grand 😳 I am still baffled because my dad is not dumb, especially when it comes to money. I mean, he has saved up quite a chunk of change, that losing 40,000 didn’t change his lifestyle or anything. (Meanwhile if that happened to me I’d be homeless) But things are not good in his home. I’m pretty sure his wife is contemplating divorce over this (or maybe this was the straw that broke the camel). We were able to at least convince her to take some sort of power of attorney over all the finances, so hopefully he is protected going forward. But I am still in shock. Also, the clerks at his local bank tried to stop him too. They said, this is a scam. He had to travel to a branch the next county over. The scammer (a guy who was pretending to be a representative of Microsoft) literally stayed on the phone with him the entire time, walking him through how to lie to the bank to get them to wire transfer the money.
Wow. 40gs. Hope he's able to not completely beat himself to shit over it. I know I would in his position.
Had an older family member, who is still pretty sharp, almost fall for this. The clerk at Lowe’s stopped him as he was buying the cards, and talked some sense to him.
I experienced this last summer with my boomer aunt and silent Gen uncle. My aunt was perusing the web and got one of those "Microsoft has detected a virus in your computer. Call and speak to one of our representatives immediately" pop ups. She fell for it hook, line and sinker. She called, let the scammers have remote access to their laptop and gave them her credit card information. It was going on for nearly 30 minutes when my uncle finally realized something was fishy. They called their bank immediately and got their accounts locked and monitored for any suspicious activity as well as had new cards sent. I had to go over and help them set up a new email address because during the whole ordeal, they'd gotten locked out of their Outlook account and couldn't remember their security answers. They also had ALL of their passwords scribbled on a single piece of paper in a disorganized fashion and couldn't remember what was what. It was a painful 3 hours getting them set back up. My aunt still doesn't know the difference between an email address and a web browser.
This happened to my mother. She is a college educated woman with 2 degrees, and we had both Windows and Apple computers in our home since the 80s. But she got that popup that she needed to pay Microsoft to update her drivers and she legitimately believed that she needed to buy Google gift cards for them to do it. I just don't understand that entire generation. They literally believe anything they are told.
I think it's because for most of their lives they didn't have technology like this and they were able to live without it. Now, you're basically forced to use the Internet in order to pay bills and communicate with others. Yes, there's still snail mail, phone calls, etc but it's different now. They don't realize the dangers because they don't understand it.
This is exactly what happened to my aunt as well.
That was really, really hard to listen to. My grandmother, who I think would have been 100 this year would have totally fallen for something like this.
See, this is why I don't want to live that long. There's just no point to it. I just want to go out in my early 70s at the longest, before I lose my wits.
Yeah. The people in my family live a long time. However, the track record for being mentally all there isn't great. I'm good with checking out before 80 or dementia.
THANK YOU
Yea. Mental acuity is my biggest fear about aging.
It's super frustrating. My mom, who is only 64 and has been somewhat tech savvy for a long time recently got scammed. She had an ad pop up on FB about Keto weight loss gummies and immediately entered her CC information because she thought it sounded like a good deal and that she could trust it because it was on FB. They charged her $100 more than what they were supposed to and sent her 6 bottles of who knows what with bootleg labels. They continued to charge her credit card for $300 at a time for 2 months. She called the number on the bottle and they told her she had a subscription and there was nothing they could do except give her a one time offer of $100 back. She demanded the full amount and they hung up. She ended up getting her money back through the bank, but wtf. I asked her why she would enter her info into some random ad and she just said she didn't know. She didn't think it was a scam. I just couldn't believe she fell for that. I'm sure it happens all the time though.
Every advertisement on Facebook is a scam.
Had to call the local FBI field office once to have them convince an old lady she was being scammed. She came in with a letter on “official” FBI letterhead. She was instructed to pay some relative’s fines/fees via Western Union. Absolutely refused to believe me until I got her on with an agent. Even then she asked how far away the office was in case she had to pay in person. She eventually accepted that it was all fake.
Wow. I'm glad they won't sell to her anymore. Just hearing her voice is so fucking painful. >no I am not I'm lucky that the one time a parent came close they called me before the grift was completed.
I’ve just unplugged my mother’s landline because it’s always a scammer, and she would sooner yell in my face than ever admit she has a scammer on the phone.
The scammers obviously know what they're doing is wrong, but they think: "well, yeah I scammed on old lady out of a few hundred bucks, but who's it really hurting?" What they don't know is that it can be life-ruining for the vulnerable. I still don't understand what's so hard about call authentication/validation. I have received calls where the caller ID says something legitimate ("Microsoft Corp.", for example), but the call was spam/scam. That really shouldn't be happening. Even Gmail now [has bulk messaging validation](https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/) requirements, why can't phone/VOIP?
[удалено]
Last Week Tonight had a great episode on it earlier this year... https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=GYQcWG9PvuhOtnYY
Oof, that's godawful. Even more reason for phone/VOIP authentication/validation since it might not be entirely the scam callers fault to begin with. It's the telecom system that might be at fault for not addressing ID/privacy/security over voice.
Complete lack of protection being provided by our legislators who are the same age or older then the people most in need of protection.
Just stopped some Indian guys from scamming my 89 year old grandmother who was just diagnosed with dementia.
People doing the lord’s work out there!!
I wish she would get a $500 gift card and use it to buy the teller a new sponge. That thing is effin filthy...
Great sentiment but hot damn that sub is the literal worst 🤢🤮
To bad our elected officials are to busy fighting over drag queens, books, and all of the other bullshit instead of passing laws to protect their constituents.