The psychology of scams.

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Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 1:20 pm

www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft1070.pdf
Warning: it's 260 pages long.

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 2:03 pm

Interesting stuff.

Given the information in there it should not be too hard to put some software together to filter out scam emails along with the spam ones.

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 2:36 pm

Forwarded to my MP. Thanks. Wink

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 4:26 pm

Firstly: thanks for the link to this. I'm glad to have read it.

And maybe I'm just a Negative Nancy, but I thought, however, that it reads very much as written by an 'outsider'. Seems strange to lump together 'You have won the Lottery' with 'Lose weight now!' And though under 'Norm Activation' on page 33, it mentions 'wanting to help others', there is no real mention of Romance Scams or Charity Scams and, though I'm guessing, I would have thought that the person who responds to those may well be miles away from their psychological profiling.

I note that they only interviewed 30 people and are unclear who they are. Initially the report describes them as 25 scam victims and 5 near-victims, but then it says that 7 (of which group: the 25?) turned out to be non-victims or marginal victims. So it is possible that they only interviewed 18 victims - maximum 23, even though they claim 25 again in the next paragraph (page 37). They were also paid for their interviews, but it does not seem to have occured to anyone that the participants could be lying, in order to obtain £50 for talking to them. I'm assuming not so, but I have known such to happen. And it doesn't specify which scams the participants responded to: it could have been diet pills or fortune tellers.

Maybe the report is a step towards something. But it could be a blindfolded very small step.

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 5:08 pm

Branwen says something smart there. If you pay someone £50 you can impact them severely. Just think about what we are doing. If you told a lad you were giving him £50 you might be able to get a trophy, and a at least a made up profession, even fake documents.

Imagine someone like us who does this as a hobby. I am sure everyone here could have gone to them and "testified". After all, nobody knows better what kind of tricks scammers use and how they work. Even real victims could be overshadowed by someone with 50+ baits on their rap-sheet. Combine that with an ability to persuade someone to poor milk over their heads, while holding a sign saying "I'm Hugh Jass" and you got one professional liar.

I'm not saying that this is happening in this case, but just think about how these "testimonies" are made, and all the possibilities.

419Eater is my life Joined: 08 Aug 2008 Posts: 475

Quote:

Warning: it's 260 pages long.

and each of them is well paid.
I go with branwen^
in my country there is the saying: I only believe in statistics i personally have made up ( supposedly origin from mr. churchill)

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 10:50 pm

^^ 83% of statistics are made up on the spot