Online Scams – Who Is Vulnerable?

Do you receive unsolicited emails that promise to solve your financial problems?

Have you encountered browser popup windows with flashing, ominous warnings like “YOU’RE COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH MALWARE!!!”?

What about random phone calls from complete strangers promising a quick, inexpensive solution for your tax debts?

At Bizeeo™, we receive many of these annoying interruptions EVERY day, including mysterious text messages asking if we provide certain services. We often play along with these scammers to learn how they operate so we can warn our customers.

We even receive phone calls from telemarketers guaranteeing to rank our business #1 in Google’s search results! Obviously, the callers aren’t aware that we are providers of online marketing services. 🙂

It IS possible to achieve very favorable results with Google because we do so for our clients on a consistent basis. But an honest, reputable marketing company would NEVER guarantee such.

Most of these phone calls come from overseas call centers designed for one purpose – to separate you (or your business) from your money.

Even more interesting are the demographics associated with the people that most often fall for these schemes and scams.

In the following video, the Better Business Bureau¹ discusses who is being victimized by these deceitful tricks, and why.

Be prepared for a surprise – it’s NOT at all who you probably expect!

We also provided the audio transcript.

Title: Millennials & Scams

Description: BBB’s David Smitherman talks to FOX6 about a new study that shows millennials are actually more vulnerable to scams than baby boomers.

Published: Sep 8, 2016

Duration: 3:32

Credit: Fox 6 News»

Begin transcript:

Fox 6 News (Fox): “When it comes to scams, I know some of you think ‘well that’s just for elderly people, they get scammed a lot’.

‘Not so fast my friend’, as Lee Corso would say. David Smitherman is in the room with the Better Business Bureau joining us to talk more about this very, very interesting research and survey you guys did on the people who get scammed and the demographics.

David Smitherman (BBB): Yes, it was surprising to us.

This is the new study just done by the BBB Institute where they surveyed two thousand (2,000) adults in the US and Canada and the result of this showed that Millennials are actually more vulnerable to being scammed than who we typically think is the little, old elderly lady.

Fox: Yes, absolutely.

Now anybody can be scammed but when you look at the research and the surveys, I mean, it’s really startling because you’re talking about (ages) 25-34, there’s a large number of them, college-educated.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think they’re getting scammed?

BBB: Well, the truth is that one-in-four households will be involved in scams costing Americans and Canadians up to 50 billion dollars.

And so many of these young people are more natural risk-takers than older people are, who do more work online or shopping online than some of our seniors do, and have a feeling that because they’ve grown up with this electronic age and they’re highly educated that they would be invulnerable to these types of scams.

The results of the survey show the exact opposite.

Fox: So they’re opening the door a little bit.

Alright, so what types of scams have they been caught by in terms of what your survey found?

BBB: When we look at the most common types of scams that have been reported to the BBB scam tracker, the tax collections scam shows that fewer than one-percent (1%) of seniors lost money, but some of the younger people showed a different result.

The lottery and sweepstakes scams that we’ve talked about here on the show many times in the past – only about ten-percent (10%) of seniors actually lost any money on that scam.

So we looked at not only education levels and age levels but particular types of scams and who is most vulnerable in those situations.

Fox: It’s interesting to hear, too, tech support scams – a lot of those Millennials were affected by that – and also the government grants which I guess makes sense for that age, too.

BBB: Well, it really does because so many of these folks have high student loan debt or other types of debts and they may be looking for ways to get out of that and these government loan and grant scams just come right into a willing participant.

Fox: Okay, so if there are Millennials out there, either you’re listening to this right now or you’re watching this right now, just tell them… and I know this is going to seem like common-sense advice, but maybe you’re not listening… you’re not heeding it. Talk about it.

BBB: Well, I mean one of the things that we all need to do is when we’re faced with some sort of situation whether it’s online, internet, or in-person, I mean stop and think. Don’t get wrapped up in the emotion of the issue.

Curb your impulse to jump into something very quickly and just really analyze the situation before you make any kind of commitment or divulge any kind of personal or financial information.

Fox: Alright, interesting information and good advice. David Smitherman with the Better Business Bureau.”

End transcript