U.S. files lawsuits over robocall scams
Anyone interested in the details of how these scams are pulled off might want to check out "scam baiting" youtube channels like Kitboga [1]. They use a virtual machine and pose as a computer-illiterate person long enough to observe all the techniques. They are also pretty funny sometimes.<p>I'm astonished by how blatant their techniques are. For example, in the "refund scam", the caller pretends to be offering a refund for some tech support contract. The steps are:<p>- Get remote desktop access to the victim's PC.<p>- Tell the victim that they must log into their online banking account to get the refund.<p>- Use "inspect element" to edit the banking page, making it look like victim got too large of a refund.<p>- Convince the victim that they can't pay back the difference by another bank transfer, but instead must pay it back in the form of gift cards.<p>It's outlandish. It goes beyond computer-illiterate victims. The victim needs to have a diminished sense of skepticism, which can come from age-related senility but also cultural unfamiliarity, anxiety, etc.<p>Unfortunately the comments include a lot of casual racism against Indians, with little awareness of the structural conditions causing these scammers to exist.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw</a>