Common contenders for being removed were scams and online tech support scams in particular. While digital technology has expanded massively over the past two decades, the main scamming strategies remain the same. Like the con artists of the past, tech support scammers will forest try to get the confidence of the victim. Tech-illiteracy plays a large part in their strategies, as many will try to make the normal functions of your computer appear like hacking or malware.
The goal of the scammer is to first get access to your computer and then convince you that there is some issue that can only be solved by paying for some sort of program renewal or having a more skilled technician fix it remotely, at a cost of course. More insidious scammers may try to gain access to your computer to find compromising information or passwords.
Generally, the average tech support scammer wants to simply take your money and run. Fortunately, consumer protection laws and tools have come a long way since the early 2000s. These days scammers will try to get you to pay them with digital gift cards. These are less regulated and generally can’t be traced back to the scammer as easily. If you have ever seen signs saying that your bank, Microsoft, and all government agencies will never ask you for gift cards and wondered what those are for, now you know.
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Others listed the college textbook industry as being in desperate need of disappearing. To explain this to non-Americans, US college students sometimes have to pay between 750$-1000$ a year just for textbooks. At an institution, they are already paying to attend. It’s not hard to see why most think this industry is just predatory and ultimately unnecessary. Even worse, some law schools make students pay for books of legal cases when these cases are often freely available online.
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We reached out to tech support scam expert Jim Browning to learn a bit more about this profession that really needs to disappear. We asked if growing tech literacy will help people avoid the more common forms of online scams. "I think this is already happening because I see the tactics of the scammers changing a little. These days, they are scamming a wider range of countries. Slovakia and Austria were two countries I hadn’t seen targeted until last year for example. Sadly this doesn’t mean that we will see a reduction in the scam phone calls though; it’s still a numbers game for scammers. Their ideal target is someone who isn’t very computer literate, has online banking (the scammers will kindly assist someone to sign up if they don’t already have this), and is generally trusting of someone trying to help (supposedly from their bank or the police). Sadly this fits the profile of a lot of older people and they are still the most likely to be scammed."
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"Forewarned is forearmed. Show relatives videos about scams. Watch the TV programs about them. We’ve probably all heard “Banks will never ask you to move money” and most people wouldn’t dream of doing that. But what happens if your bank calls and they are able to give you convincing details about your account? What happens then? The short answer is “Never trust a call that you receive. If you want to make sure it’s really your bank. YOU MAKE THE CALL TO A PUBLISHED PHONE NUMBER. Seeing the language and techniques scammers use, it’s far easier than you think to be scammed. Anyone can be scammed (myself included)," was his advice for how the average person can defend themselves against scams.
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