| ▲ | jeroenhd an hour ago | |
Their deception often relies on remote-controlling a PC, modifying a bank balance to show a fake number using basic "inspect element", and convincing the victim that they "accidentally" received a refund that's too high (often by having the victim type out the "refund" amount in their notepad-looking "refund system" and adding a couple of zeroes). By making the victim believe that they're to blame for this innocent worker losing his job, they convince these people that they need to go outside normal financial systems to get the money back before anyone notices. Alternative scam scripts also have scammers pretend to be government officials threatening with fines and lawsuits, but the end goal is often to get into the victim's bank account in a way that the victim will tell the bank that everything is fine when fraud detection systems catch wire transfers or suspicious behaviour. If the victim at any point opens up their official banking app, which scammers cannot control, they'll see that they never received the supposed "refund". With banks moving more and more functionality to apps, scammers can't pull the same tricks if they don't have access to your phone. Scambaiting Youtubers have shown to be able to throw scammers of their guard by doing the most basic things. Disabling "inspect element" and cmd.exe will stop a scammer right in their tracks, because suddenly their phone script doesn't work any more. If the victim needs to wait a full day, they'll be more likely to talk to someone. There are plenty of interviews with victims where they will say they realized their mistake hours or even minutes after it's too late. Stress and constant pressure is one of the primary means scammers employ to prevent people from thinking rationally so their obvious and ridiculous lies don't get spotted. While I think developer verification is monumentally stupid and won't stop any serious scams, I do believe that the timeout measure Google makes people jump through does help. | ||