And “pig butchering” scams are on the rise via social media.

Pork Talk

What’s the craic? c|net’s Bree Fowler reports: List of Companies Most Impersonated by Scammers

“Gift cards or cryptocurrency”
Consumers submitted about 52,000 reports of scammers impersonating Best Buy or the Geek Squad in 2023, the FTC said. … Those numbers were followed by 34,000 reports of scammers impersonating Amazon and about 10,000 falsely claiming to be PayPal.
…
In terms of dollars lost to fraud, those companies fell far behind the likes of Microsoft and Publishers Clearing House. … Losses tied to Microsoft impersonations totaled a whopping $60 million, and scammers passing themselves off as Publishers Clearing House swindled consumers out of $49 million last year.
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Scammers will often contact potential victims and tell them that their software or warranty has expired, or that their computer is infected with a virus. They’ll ask consumers to pay up, or ask for account login information, to make the problem go away. Sometimes … the FTC says, they’ll ask for payment … with gift cards or cryptocurrency, which by their nature are harder to trace and recover.

What does Best Buy have to say for itself? CBS’s Megan Cerullo quotes the firm’s flacks: Best Buy is the most impersonated

“Report suspected scams”
“Our customers’ safety is incredibly important to us. While scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated, we have a team of experts and a number of resources dedicated to help prevent fraud and educate consumers, including how to spot warning signs and protect themselves,” Best Buy said in a statement. [It] also urged customers to report suspected scams by calling the company’s support line.

Could the company do more? CTV’s Pat Foran tells the tale of such a scam: He got scammed out of $25,000:

An Ontario senior [is] sharing his story to warn others. [He] purchased a printer from his local Best Buy in early April. He was having trouble setting it up, so he decided to look up Geek Squad on Google.
…
But the website was a spoof. … What followed was a series of trips to his bank and a Bitcoin machine. In the end, Gibbs had been scammed out of $25,000. … “It was almost like I was in a trance and I kept thinking it was me that called Best Buy and Geek Squad and they are reputable companies,” said Gibbs.
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He said … it was hard to think clearly and he wanted to share his story to warn others. “I’m really upset, but my main reason is to make other people know that you’ve got to be careful going on a website because it could be a scam number.”

Indeed it could. Here’s the FTC’s Emma Fletcher: Who’s who in scams

“Scams that started on social media”
Scammers are all about spinning lies, but they still operate in the real world. Many scammers pretend to be well-known businesses to gain trust. … Reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network point to some of their favorites.
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Phony Geek Squad emails tell you that a computer service you never signed up for is about to renew. … Microsoft impersonation scams start with a fake security pop-up. … And calls from the fake Publishers Clearing House say you’ll have to pay fees to collect your (fake) sweepstakes winnings. … But people also told us that they lost the most money on scams that started on social media—people most frequently named Facebook and Instagram.

Started on social media, you say? u/Great-Baseball-1079 recounts one such scam:

My dad’s lost his life savings to a scam. He was just a couple years from retirement.
…
I want to scream and cry and wake up from this nightmare. He fell hard for a pig butchering scam for 2 months straight. I’m so upset that I didn’t push harder for him to question what was going on. I know it’s not my fault, I didn’t have enough information to be certain it was a scam until recently.
…
This is his entire life just gone. Idk how he’ll retire now and I don’t think there’s any service to help people like this. … They were wire transfers, … can anything be done? … Do people ever recover from this type of loss?

Pig whatnow? Noam Zitzman has this primer: ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams

‘Pig butchering’ scams are every bit as dark/disturbing as the name implies. Common in Southeast Asia and spreading rapidly to the rest of the world, pig butcherers prey on people’s trust and goodwill as well as loneliness and vulnerability to win friendship and/or love online. [It’s] a time-tested, heavily scripted and contact-intensive process, … often combining romance scams with an investment spin.
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A random and innocuous text message is seemingly sent in error. … Continued communication cultivates trust. … Sometime later, the scammer mentions a cryptocurrency investment opportunity, and the victim is persuaded to participate. … Months later, after the victim has ‘invested’ hundreds or thousands—in some cases, millions—of dollars in cryptocurrency exchanges, the pig butcherer vanishes with the money.
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And the depraved criminality doesn’t stop there. Pig butchering is often carried out by victims of human trafficking. Many … were pursuing seemingly legitimate job opportunities away from home, only to have their passports seized by criminal gangs [and] forced into servitude.

What can we do to protect ourselves? Here’s Bendacious:

I have a simple rule for phone calls: If someone calls me, then I will never give them any personal information. I’ve had calls before from my phone supplier and my bank where I was almost certain it was them but I can’t go through their ‘security check’ because they called me. If it’s important then I call them back.
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Just wish I had one simple rule I could pass to my elderly parents for email and social media.

Could this be a job for AI? That’s what Randseed wonders:

It’s been out of control for a very long time now. A couple months ago I looked at my phone after being busy all day at about 5PM. Out of the blue, there were … 73 spam calls.
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Some left voice mails which were hang ups or nonsensical BS, and one was three minutes of looping elevator music. That’s a very exceptional day, but usually it numbers about a dozen. I didn’t get bothered by it at the time because I’ve long had to set my phone to send directly to voicemail any call from anyone who isn’t in my address book. This leads to some problems, such as when someone I want to talk to callers from an alternative number, but I’ve gotten it to work.
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Maybe one of these genius “AI” companies should leverage machine learning to control this ****.

It’s all very well for the FTC to warn people, but what about the other three-letter agencies? u/Heyhighhowareu makes the point:

This is the **** we need the FBI, NSA and CIA for. They spy on everyone. If they’re going to violate our rights anyways, at least they should use it for good.

Meanwhile, with all this talk of Geek Squad, RM Myers feels confused:

I’m confused. Based on all the complaints about the Geek Squad on the internet, I assumed they were the scammers. Does this mean we now have scammers posing as scammers?

And Finally:

Excellent engineering or expensive deathtrap?

Previously in And Finally

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Image source: Pascal Debrunner (via Unsplash; leveled and cropped)