Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive increase in online scams. We’ve all been frustrated lately by the amount of scam text messages and phone calls. In the UK, a consumer group found that phone and text fraud was up 83% during the pandemic. While it seems like the police and regulators are powerless to stop them, there are a growing number of amateurs that are fighting back.
There is a whole online community of ‘scam baiters’ that try and scam the scammers. It has become big on TikTok and YouTube as these scam baiters pretend to be old lady’s, young children or celebrities (one scam baiter even convinced a scammer they were speaking to Britney Spears). None of this will actually stop the growing problem of scammers. But until tech platforms, telecos, police and regulators step up and work together to stop this problem, we can expect everyday people to find a way to turn it into content.
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