The main fuel is the internet , followed by mobile phones and social media.

AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily forge documents.

But at the same time AI is a double edged sword, it can be used for both offence and defense.

asdfman123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's been used for defense for a long time. AI is why spam filters started actually working in the 2000s.

	▲	PunchyHamster 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		different kind of AI

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cyanydeez 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

the point though of a proper scam is to filter out the believables and find the guillibles.

You don't exactly want convincing evidence; you want a good story.

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LocalH 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The main fuel is the "need" to have browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet. JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after.

Let's ask Vint Cerf whether the web was meant to run logic, or just be a document format. I bet no matter what he answers, the world would be like the GIF pronunciation "I don't care if the original creator said it's pronounced like giraffe, I'm gonna say it like gift because I KnOw BeTtEr"

Internet 3 when (because I know that academia does already have an "Internet 2", although I bet due to Internet 1 security issues, Internet 2 is already compromised too)

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stingraycharles 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after.

That’s a really extreme take that lacks any nuance.

Might as well blame the OS as well for allowing any custom code to be executed.

	▲	jameshart 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Douglas Adams put the source of the rot a bit further back: > This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.
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cyberax 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The first Nigerian Prince scams started over email.

	▲	krisoft an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Mayhaps. But Spanish prisoner letters were known much before that. Which is basically the same advance fee scam but with a different cover story. Here is a story which describes one such letter from 1913: https://web.archive.org/web/20020815055745/http://www.samizd...
	▲	jamiek88 8 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Snail mail scams like that were common for decades prior. My mates dad nearly fell for one once.