Online or email-based and phone scams have become ubiquitous in recent years, and appear to be becoming increasingly difficult to prevent or address. — Image by Freepik
WASHINGTON: The elderly are more likely to be scammed by imposters than other age groups going by phone and Internet-based experiments carried out by Chicago-based scientists.
The research team found "a sizable number of older adults engaged without scepticism" when contacted by a fictitious US government agency, with most of the credulous giving up "potentially compromising personal information."
The tests involved the researchers mimicking a deceptive tactic widely used by scammers - telling their targets of "potential compromise of personal information relevant to their Social Security and Medicare benefits."
"The results suggest that many older adults, including those without cognitive impairment, are vulnerable to fraud and scams," according to the researchers, whose was published in JAMA Network Open, an American Medical Association (AMA) journal in September. It showed 16.4% of the 644 participants, who were described as mostly well-educated, as being taken in by the mock-up scam.
Those classed as having fallen for the set-up were those who "confirmed that they did not change their personal information, or provided the last 4 digits of their Social Security number," according to the researchers, who work at Rush University Medical Center.
Online or email-based and phone scams have become ubiquitous in recent years, and appear to be becoming increasingly difficult to prevent or address.
The scourge has spread to text messages, social media and messaging applications – categories that were not covered by the Chicago survey – and often involve so-called spoofing and the attempt to spread viruses and malware as well as attempt to persuade recipients to part with personal and financial information.
Some bigger companies have email addresses to which suspicious correspondence can be forwarded, while Google has a facility for the reporting of Gmail accounts involved in scamming.
Various US government departments have put the losses to older people from such scams at anything from US$1.5bil (RM7.09bil) to US$8bil (RM37.84bil), including Covid-related fraud losses in 2020 of around US$100mil (RM472.95mil). The data depend heavily on victims – who are likely to be not only angry but also confused, embarrassed and stigmatised – reporting that they have been scammed. – dpa
