As the topic line suggests, be very wary of scammers. I was visiting an older relative of mine, who is in their late 70s, and they almost fell prey to a Social Security scam.
They almost allowed the scammers access to their bank accounts - both savings and checking - which would have enabled the scammers to drain all funds from their account.
I contacted their bank and they were able to set it up to where if their checking account needed to be accessed remotely, it would require multiple parties to sign on, in addition to 2FA. Basic security steps such as this, make it significantly easier to ward off scammers.
Like CSAM traffickers, these scammers are predatory, heartless individuals who prey on the uninformed and vulnerable. They exploit flaws in the human condition in ways that cause irreparable damage to their lives and the lives of their immediate families.
I recommend anybody interested in this check out scammer.info if you’d like to know more about them and their practices.
In the US, these scammers have been very, very active as of late, and robocalls from people pretending to be debt collectors, ISPs, Microsoft, the IRS, SSA, and even the FBI are far more effective at stealing money than you think. The “average person” is a literal knuckle-dragging Neanderthal when it comes to things such as this (hence why the obscenity doctrine is unjustifiable and should be overturned) and many victims of these scams aren’t even aware that they’ve been scammed, and usually fall prey to these scams again.
Anyway - as I’ve said before, check out https://www.scammer.info if you wanna know more about this type of exploitive behavior, and keep your wits about you.
These scammers are heartless, soulless bastards with no empathy for their victims, just like child pornographers and CSAM traffickers.