Grateful I wasn’t scammed out of $$$
I was never one to tempt fate by boasting — or even quietly assuming — that I couldn’t be fooled by an online crook.
Good thing, because some time ago, I was.
I lost my main Instagram account (but no money, thank God) to a hacker who apparently also “stole” the account of one of my second cousins and, masquerading as her, began sending me messages using perfect English.
I can’t remember all the particulars, but the hacker somehow convinced me that my cousin had begun some clothing-sales-related website and needed me to substitute the website’s email address for mine on my account so I could have access to the private website … a switch that was to be temporary.
We had several conversations. Soon as I made the change, Instagram notified me the account, via the email address, was now in the hands of someone located in the Nigerian state of Abuja.
I noticed Cuz’s account had no fresh posts. I can’t even access my old account because I took followers by request only.
Unfortunately, thinking this was my cousin, I’d also revealed my cellphone number to the hacker — who texted me from several spoofed numbers professing their desire to give the account back to me. They claimed they’d had their own Instagram account stolen and had given in to an anger-fueled temptation to pay the misdeed forward.
Any time I tried to start a new Instagram account using one of my email addresses, the hacker would send some kind of phishing message, trying to get me to reveal the accounts’ passwords. But having gone into “fool me once … ” mode, I’d ceased all communications with this individual, blocked the numbers they texted from and changed all my passwords. I still shudder to think what might have been.
It seems a lifetime long ago that one of the biggest online “dangers” was passing along information and stories determined by snopes.com to be false.
Nowadays it’s these online scammers, whose sophistication grows right along with the growth in technology.
According to a news release that hit the inbox the other day, the United States is “the No. 1 most-scammed country in the world,” with more than 450,000 online scam victims last year. Cited was “State of Internet Scams 2023” at socialcatfish.com, a reverse-search technology company, which used FBI and FTC data released in 2023 to come up with these figures.
The U.K. comes in behind us, with nearly 300,000 victims. Every other country in the Top 10 list of scam-ees lags (gladly, I’m sure) far behind, with fewer than 6,000 victims each: Canada (coming in third place at 5,517), India, Australia, France, South Africa, Germany, Brazil and 10thranked Mexico (a mere 1,119).
This news is not surprising, but it sure is downright sigh-inducing.
The release goes on to state that Americans lost $10.3 billion in these scams — “more than the GDP of 66 countries” — and nearly $7 billion more lost than the year before. This country makes for a big target “due to its affluence and widespread use of technology.”
The only sorta-good news is that Arkansas is ranked as the “18th least-scammed” state … nearly 3,000 Arkies lost more than $46.2 million in 2022.
More than $46 million? Hey, I did say “sorta” good.
The news release goes on to cite the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center’s report of having “recovered $433 million of money lost to online scams in 2022, which equates to just 4.2% of the $10.3 billion lost.” It also states that the scammers are “often from western African and eastern European countries.” Yep, Nigeria (which pains me personally; according to my Ancestry.com DNA report, the biggest chunk of my heritage lies there) and Russia are named specifically.
Even before my Instagram experience I’d grown weary of social-media scammer hopefuls … impersonators and self-proclaimed cryptocurrency kings/queens. And I’m still rolling my eyes at earlier Facebook friend requests that appeared to be from middle-aged guys who were single, attractive, Christian military veterans with great-sounding jobs.
Being married, I would have had no business responding to those come-hithers anyway. But I wonder how many victims they drew. Especially since online romance scams are just about the worst.
“We released proprietary survey results after polling 5,500 romance scam victims in June 2023,” according to Social Catfish’s “State of Internet Scams 2023” article, which reveals that 81% of the romance-scam-ees chose not to come forward and file complaints with the FBI or Federal Trade Commission due to shame. “If you are a victim, report it to the FBI, FTC, and your local police department immediately,” the news release urges.
Experts give these and other warnings for scam avoidance: Don’t give money or personal information to outof-the-blue callers (no matter who they say they’re with) or people you’ve not met in person. Do a reverse-image search. Beware of communications with poor grammar (I would obviously advise being wary even of those who use good grammar). Beware of those not only asking for money, but asking for it via gift cards (whose reputation, like money orders and cashier’s checks before them, has been tainted forever). Beware even of callers who sound like a loved one in distress … that’s only one way artificial intelligence is being used by swindlers.
And by all means, don’t assume you can’t be bamboozled. Or that all scammers come from Nigeria or Russia. Email (just don’t request money or passwords or my hand in marriage):