We often associate people who fall for scams as belonging to the older age bracket. Their being unfamiliar with technology and digital media leads many to misuse it and scam the older generation easily.
But it seems that might not be entirely correct as some recent studies have found that instead of elders it is the younger generation that is more likely to get scammed online.
As per a study conducted by Visa and the Institute for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University, it was found that a quarter of British people that are between the ages of 18-34 are more likely to fall for online scams than those older than them.
A UK Finance spokesperson was quoted by Dazed commenting on this. They said “While fraud can impact anyone at any point in their lives, younger people can be more susceptible to some types of fraud because of the ways criminals target people, including via text, Whatsapp and email,” and added that “Younger adults are also more likely to share personal information online, through social media or by filling in details such as their email address and phone number on various websites or pages. This can put them at greater risk as fraudsters can use this information to make it easier for them to target individuals and appear genuine.”
1. Not Giving Attention To Grammar/Spelling
As per the study, it was found that a lot of British people between the age of 18 to 34 don’t pay enough attention to the spelling, grammar, syntax and more of such text or email messages.
Improper grammar or spelling errors are considered to be the biggest clues in order to figure out how authentic a message is. Actually official and authentic messages will never have such errors because they are most often than not bot created and follow a particular script.
2. Not Being Wary Of Such Messages Instantly
Another reason found was that 29% of the people surveyed were found to not be suspicious enough of such messages from the getgo. The tone and wordings of these messages did not ring enough alarm bells for many of these people.
Read More: What Is This New ’Hello Mum’’ Or ‘’Hello Dad’’ Scam On WhatsApp
3. Pretending To Be Someone They Know
As per a Dazed report, a 24-year-old person talked about how they got scammed after the person pretended to be someone they knew. According to this person “I’d put an order in with a local sweet shop on Instagram for a Mother’s Day gift. I know who owned the sweet shop and purchased from them many times. Then on Mother’s Day I got a message from them saying ‘hi, could you help me?’ so I instantly said ‘yes, of course.’ We had a normal conversation before they asked me to screenshot a link for them.”
The person added that it was only after a few minutes that they focused on what the link was which turned out to be one to reset their Instagram password. They further added that “I came off my Instagram for two minutes, went back on, and I was logged out.”
The scammer started to post on their account, sharing shady phishing scam links with their friends and “I was getting phone calls and messages from people asking ‘have you seen what’s on your Instagram, is that you?’,” and the person on the other hand“I was crying, I was very stressed.”
Fortunately, they got back their account once they reached out to Instagram, explained what happened and changed their email and password to the account. They did end with how “It was so easy for them to hack my account. I literally sent a screenshot and within seconds I was logged out.”
4. Appealing With Gifts/Contests
Scammers also conduct frauds by appearing to hold talent contests where youngsters are appealed to submit artwork, writings, videos of them acting, singing, dancing and more in order to win some amount of money, fame, exposure and more.
These can be very dangerous as along with identity information the youngers also share visual images/videos of themselves that can later be misused by the scammers.
5. Weight Loss Scam
Weight loss scams are extremely prevalent these days with many of these scammers directly hitting the intense body image issues that many of the youngers have these days.
These days they often go several steps ahead to unethically use clips from authentic influencers who are popular in these areas as a way to seem authentic and legit. Many of these influencers don’t even know that their face or clips are being used to promote such scams and they often make posts or videos calling out how they have no association with those sites or products and that people should not fall for the fraud.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: CNBC, The New York Times, Dazed
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Scammed Online, online scam, Weight Loss Scams, scams, Identity Theft, Social Media Scams, Scams youngsters, Scams teens, Visa, Visa Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL), Visa Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL) study, instagram scam, instagram security
Disclaimer: We do not hold any right, copyright over any of the images used, these have been taken from Google. In case of credits or removal, the owner may kindly mail us.
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