Everyone knows that you can't trust people on the internet (even me!) lest they be scammers, or in the case of children, child predators. So you can't just go putting your information online just anywhere. Of course, that's arguably easier for children, come to think of it. What credit card? What driver's license? Credit score??? As a kid I was scolded for punching my cell phone number into a website to get 'free' tokens on one or more of the old social gaming sites. Do they even let you do that anymore?

As an aside, my favorite go-to was the free insurance quotes. For sure, I'm John Smith at 123 Fake Address Lane, and I have two three-door sedans that need insuring. Either they wizened up to my schemes at some point and blocked me, or I was just doing everyone a service by giving a fake service [that promised fake rewards] fake information. But I digress, always. As a separate digression, I wonder how companies can draw the legal line between passing exorbitant fees to your phone number via text... and just sending an OTP for MFA. Some sites will have you consent first, but idk...

Suffice to say, that fake-insurance-quotes-for-free-tokens service (on some level) could have been fraudulent, and I could have been scammed somehow, using means I still don't understand today.

Fast forward [some] years, and I'm coming home to my s/o on the phone, on hold. That's a little unusual for us, as I would imagine most people. Emphasis on "little". So come to find out that dropping eaves is of no concern, this is an Important Financial Call and maybe I should be involved. She had received a phone call from The Bank, reporting that maybe someone had gotten into her account and made a fraudulent purchase. Gift Cards, maybe. Well, certainly that's not good, she supposes. We should look into that, she reckons. I ask, did she check caller ID? Yep. Did she call the bank directly (knowing that these can be falsified)? no. Did he ask for private information already? Nope, he actually offered some. (to wit, name, address, phone number...)

Well, she doesn't like to talk about this much, but they eventually sent an MFA SMS to her phone. You know, the ones that always say "if someone asks for this, don't give it to them!" and at the end of the phone call, she was out hundreds of dollars in Gift Cards, but the man on the other end of the line said "don't worry, we got it all fixed."

As we thought about it more, the unsolicited call, the lack of verification on our part, and the mysterious charges not being rectified weighed on us, so she went in person to talk it through at the bank and attempted to clear things up. It's easy for me to think that I wouldn't fall for such a thing, but that's probably hindsight bias... and some level of "I'm special"ism

And there is something that could be said about the caller's accent, but I really don't know how to navigate that as a political or moral issue, so I'll leave that where it is. Suffice to say, it played a role via heuristics that are arguably invalid.

But you know what else? I had to call the credit card company for something and sure enough, they'll ask you to identify yourself via secret numbers on the card, sure. But if you're doing truly special stuff, they'll send a notification to your phone. An OTP. But what does the message say? "Don't give this number to anyone." So, being the smart aleck I am, I told the lady on the phone "hey, I shouldn't give this to you, right?" and I really wonder how often she hears that. Probably quite often, as she just repeated the same "and now the code please" so... what's the right play here? I called them, so I must be talking to the right person? Well, their system shouldn't require me to break "the rules" to facilitate identity confirmation...

So when I hear about "pig butchering" scams, it's quite unfortunate. But I realize that I'm probably not immune to it. Lots of folks can trip up or ignore the warning signs. But what I really wonder about is where I'll be in fifty years. When you hear that the older folks are the ones who are more easily parted with their money (not to imply they are foolish), well, I have to wonder if that will be me. Especially if you stop to ponder what the technology was fifty years ago. Check fraud? I bet people have been selling property they don't own for ages. How many times did this guy sell the Brooklyn Bridge anyway?

I guess it could come down to cognitive changes with age, or society changes too quickly for people to keep up with technology, or maybe there's some constant portion of the population that will be targeted by scammers and successfully figured out, simply because where there's a will there's a way?