Re: Today I became rich...
Sadly the fact that they are less outrageous also makes them more believable and dangerous for normies.
"Click here to accept your package" from the postal services
"Update your personal details" from microsoft/acrobat/bank
etc.
We'd always check the domains and senders and if necessary would check online if it's a scam, but our parents' generation might not. If they are expecting a package and they get an email like that they think "that must be it" and click it.
My parents have been victims of phishing/friendship scam twice now.
- One time was one of those package emails around christmas. Thankfully they only lost about 5 euros, managed to get back the (only) 50 euros that had been charged on the card apart from that.
- Second time was a whatsapp scammer pretending to be me. Gave my mom a whole story about how I had lost my phone and had a new number and I needed money to pay off a debt quickly etc. Parents transferred a total of 2500 euros in total.
managed to recover 1000, rest was a loss.
The whatsapp scam was ridiculous since a) I supposedly was at a public laudromat (I've never used a public laundromat) and b) I was asking my parents to borrow money (I've never asked them to borrow me one cent, if anything I borrowed THEM money). So I don't know wtf they would ever think it was me. But my mom is sick and her mind is affected and her mother instinct overrides everything and she panics and sends the money.
The worst part was, it was one of those quick bank transfer thingies, and according to the bank they couldn't recover (most of) that money anymore. We contacted them less than 1.5 hours after it happened. No fucking way they can't stop that, it usually takes longer to transfer money between banks than that. The scammer made my parents pay in several parts of 500 euros a piece (because it won't automatically trigger an alert), but you're not gonna tell me the bank doesn't have any safeties on people suddenly paying several 500 euro payments into an account they previously never had any contact with. Fuck them so hard. And if I ever run into the Mamadou Diallo who took advantage of my mom's motherly instincts I'll murder him with my own bare hands. I feel the bloodlust come up even just thinking about it.