to not understand how some people fall for online hoaxes?

[Gramz]

Just had a message from someone sending me a link as 'Emirates are giving away 500 free tickets' - they think they're doing me a huge favour... it's clearly a massive hoax. The web address isn't even for Emirates it's got a load of random numbers in it!

Another acquaintance (colleague) fell for an email where someone was asking for money for their dying son. She gave them over £300.

I don't know what I'm missing but AIBU to wonder how people (especially young people who grew up surrounded by technology) fall for these ridiculously obvious scams?

No idea I have had about 3 emails from ‘HRMC’ about a 400 tax return
When everyone should know they don’t email you these types of things

I was watching a documentary the other day and one woman gave a man she had never met over £50000 because she 'loved him' - she hadn't even Skyped with him. She had just seen a photo. ONE photo.

@selepele I've had those before...

Twitter and the fake slebs are the best.I had Olly Murssaying he lost his wallet in America and could i send him £500 worth o Itunes vouchers.

I told hiim to piss off.But obviously somebody does fall them.

Some of them are terribly obvious but it is easy to say you would never be victim to a hoax until it happens to you.

Also lots of these happen to older people. My hairdressers parents fell for the scam where they were told their grandson was arrested/in hospital and needed money. They are in their 80s.

Happened to me in a hotel. Got a phone call to my room asking for me by name saying it was the reception and could I give my credit card again. I did. 3 big screen tvs from Target later it was sorted. I was at a work event wearing a name tag going in an out of the meeting room (don't do that by the way) and this is how they knew who to ask for. I hadn't even told my husband the name of the hotel so a call coming through on the room phone had to be from reception in my mind. Learned a lesson there - if "reception" call you say you'll be right down.

I've travelled all over the world and am relatively savvy but still got caught.

Some people always see the best in others and assume they’re telling the truth. The scammers abuse their good nature.

Personally I’m a cynic haha!

@pallisers I don't think that's obvious though and can imagine most people falling for that one as it's quite clever (though I never give credit card details over the phone as calls can be recorded). Sorry that happened to you.

Some of them are incredibly obvious though. I understand slightly more when elderly people get caught out but still... people give away their whole life savings. You'd at least want to meet the person you're giving them to?

Yes I know it was clever (and not online either so fairly off point :)) but it did give me a lot of sympathy for the people who give someone access to their computer thinking they are microsoft or who wire money having been told their grandson has an emergency. The basic premise is kind of the same - I presumed no one would know I was at that hotel other than the hotel, I was wrong. They presume only the grandkid could give their number or only microsoft would know they have a computer. It did make me think.

The nigerian prince type scam is a mystery though.

'Learned a lesson there - if "reception" call you say you'll be right down.'
Some hotels have abolished receptions and just have people wandering around with ipads. Easy to become one of them...

Guess I'll just have to stay home Strawberry :)

It makes me laugh as well!

My mom/gran/ etc wouldn’t lend me a £10 let alone give me a huge chunk of savings - but ‘live’ and these woman fall for anything

Doubt it’s even the same man emailing

because some are very sophisticated and clever.

I've recently had two emails saying my direct debit for TV license was rejected and I needed to set up a new direct debit.

It was very clever, the logo looked correct, well written, no obvious typos, (usual giveaway), no obvious email suspicions, I had to check a number of things very carefully before I decided it wasnt genuine

Yes, HMRC, banks I've never had accounts with, tv licence, PayPal, Apple, latest was Southern Water. The important thing is not to open , not to respond in any way. Report them if you can.

People believe everything they see. People sharing some shite post on Facebook and commenting 'thanks '. The ones where there are so many iPhones that can't be sold and we are giving them away to the lucky sharers!

Recently I’ve noticed quite a lot of holiday scams/hoaxes on Facebook. A random Facebook page, with literally no posts, called ‘centerparks holiday giveaways’ or something similar, will write a post about how a family has pulled out of their trip at the last minute, so they’re going to give away that holiday for free to someone who likes and shares the post. These posts get so many shares and very few people seem to realise it’s fake.

Look at how Mumsnetters get sucked in by trolls who are clearly on the grab. People are too gullible however some scams are quite sophisticated.

Christine Lagarde keeps emailing me, trying to give me money.

Leaving aside the fact that the IMF is not well-known for just benevolently offloading funds to people without demanding its ton of flesh hoping for something in return for its investment, I'm sure she wouldn't have a need for a personal secretary to relieve her of some of her more mundane tasks (nor the financial means available to be able to employ one, for that matter).

There’s a few that look very convincing tbf- the iTunes one is absolutely identical to the actual. With others you have to feel a bit sorry for them, that they want to be loved that badly that they’ll fall for such an obvious lie.?

I once read that they deliberately make the scams laughable and littered with poor English vocab/grammar and odd phrasing so as to avoid wasting their time (as they would see it).

They have no interest in reeling in a potential mark, spending a lot of time on winning them over and then having them eventually smell a rat much further down the line and pull out before handing any money over.

It seems they figure that, if you're gullible/vulnerable enough to fall initially for something that the vast majority of people would instantly see as a ridiculous scam attempt, you're much more likely to be a 'live one' who will allow them to take you for everything you have.

Filthy, despicable people. I always wonder why it is that those who clearly have such brilliant brains for coming up with intricate scams and micro-organising all of the necessary stages and accomplices for successful execution don't just apply their considerable skills to setting up a lucrative legitimate business. Surely that must be a whole lot less stressful, no?!

My company's iT security team now send out phishing emails to all staff once a quarter and anyone who clicks gets dragged off to mandatory training. 😆. Given that basically everyone involved is well educated, you’d be amazed at the click rates.

I did it, stupidly picked on a link in an email from "paypal". As soon as I did it I though ah shit! But it was too late. Luckily they of got £35 and PayPal are still to get back to me even although I had to do all the detective work myself to find out who it was.

This will be obvious to most people, but in case anybody is unaware (and do make sure that any vulnerable friends and family know), if you're on a PC and you very carefully hover over the link that they want you to click on, making very sure that you don't click at all, you'll see the address that clicking on the link would take you to.

Invariably, it's never '[email protected]' or '[email protected] (although they probably could spoof that if they bothered to), but usually a very long and random-looking string of characters, often including the identifier of a less prominent country such as Belize or Rwanda - which will have no link at all to your own country or that of the supposed originator.

People are stupid.

Just remember the Ice Bucket Challenge and how many people seemed to genuinely believe that they were raising money and not just awareness for ALS directly by the act of being consensually 'got'. Not that many people actually knew that it was meant to be 'for' ALS or indeed had ever heard of the condition.

You also get the other asinine charity-support claims, imploring you to click on a link directly to the charity (not a third-party advertiser) so as to raise funds. Yep, every time you click to go to the WWF website, WWF will donate 10p to itself and make an absolute fortune! Makes perfect sense....

That is very good to know webuilt,I had no idea.

The Russian lady who believed she was having an online affair with Chris Hemsworth raised my eyebrow the other week. Especially the bit where she paid him $15k because he was a bit short.....

www.google.com/amp/s/www.rt.com/russia/445048-woman-scammed-chris-hemsworth/amp/