Why do people keep falling for financial scams
By venshida
@venshida (4836)
United States
October 14, 2009 7:34am CST
I was listening the radio this morning, and they said there is a online scam involving Walmart. It appears as if people are receiving emails stating they can do a survey and receive a gift certificate for $100.00. The first page is a survey, but the second part requires Social Security Numbers etc. Of course, Walmart did not issue the survey. It's just another scam. I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would be caught up with these types of scams. Is it that these people are dumb or greedy? Why do they keep falling for these scams?
1 person likes this
4 responses
@manong05 (5027)
• Philippines
14 Oct 09
People do take risks in their desire to earn. I don't think it's actually because of greed or stupidity. They take it as investments and just like any business undertakings, either you gain or lose.
I personally think, it doesn't take much time to analyze and study whatever knocks on our doors. Especially if the offer is too good to be true, chances are it is a scam. This has been proven over and over again, but still some unscrupulous websites are able to victimize people. Bad people can only fool us if we allow them to.
enjoy
@SantaPants (81)
•
14 Oct 09
I think that's true. To be honest if anyone had no doubts something was true and say, for example, you won money you'd claim it even if your entirely selfless. Nice people can get scammed to and when some scams are very very well hidden it can catch the best people out. Although some people caught by scammer are the product of stupidity no doubt.
@amybrezik (2118)
• United States
14 Oct 09
I think it is because everyone wants something for free. The idea of getting a gift card or free laptop etc, just for fillng out a survey is very appealing. I got hooked into things like that a while back, of course I didn't receive anything. I do think a lotof people hope "maybe this time it's not a scam" Although, if a survey asked for my SSN I would def. stop filling it out.
@SantaPants (81)
•
14 Oct 09
It's hard to say. I still recieve endlesss emails asking me to have a job holding funds paying abroad and take 10% for myself (you will recieve a bad cheque that will bounce after you have passed the momey on as banks usually show the money available to you for a while) and lots of emails trying to get my bank account by telling me I've won how ever many millions on some lottery. If you've not entered anything there's no way you'll be winning that much! As i get so many it must work!
I think they'll be a mix of reasons why it still works, each person that falls for it may be for different mixes of reasons. Greed is probably one of them, stupidity definately. Also the personal may be new to the internet and not heard of these scams, they may be desperate and get caught up in the idea plus there may be a percentage of people who have mental conditions that do not allow them to think objectively.
I personally hate these scammers though, it's greed beyond greed. Maybe some have reasons like they can't think of any way to support their families, but for the most part I wouldn't care if the scammers suffered slow and amzingly painful deaths!
