Vocal Voices

It wants people to have a legal right to get their money back, but not from the scammers, from the banks.

Err, no. Why should the rest of us responsible bank customers pay for the idiocy of these fools?

People fall for scams because they think that they can get something for nothing - greed. Why the Hell should the rest of us rescue them? Let us be honest here, most of the people who lose out are not frail old grannies and grandpas, they are people up for a bet. If they fail it is not for me or the banks to pick them up.

What I would do is have a daily roll call of the numpties who get scammed - named and shamed. I would publicise all the details of the scam, with ways to avoid them. First up would be delete the email or put the phone down. Second would be to go make a cup of tea/coffee.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for these 'victims', they are their own worst enemies and it is not for the banks, or anyone else, to save them.

There was a man on Breakfast this morning who had been scammed out of 10k for his house deposit by scammers who had perfectly copied the details of his estate agents I felt very sorry for him actually

Some of the victims of scamming are foolish, and fall for get-rich-quick schemes, but these days the scammers are so clever it could happen to almost anyone

Email, text, anything, close mail, put down phone, contact the "supposed" company direct if you are not expecting exactly that request. Even if you are, check anyway.

The big problem for me, today, is the so called "helpful" mail apps like iPhone and Android where they hide the actual email address of the sender and only present the "name" the scammer chose to put on the mail.

99.999% of all scam mails come from an address like yahoo@email.com. Yeah, likely. It's @yahoo.com.

Simply presenting the mail address and teaching people what company addresses look like would defuse about 90% of all scams and, eventually, stop them.

As a professional in this space I'm constantly exasperated by this whole thing. I won't respond to a mail on my phone, or mobile tablet, EVER. I check it out on Windows/Outlook and then, should I think it's pukka, I'll close the mail and log into their site or pick up a phone and call them on their listed number.

It's not difficult. It reminds me of a raging argument I had with #2 (idiot) daughter who was shouting at me down the phone that she had received an email from ebay, to a mail address not registered on ebay, because it said ebay on the sent from name line on her phone. I told her to go check her bank account and she had to, sheepishly, phone me back and admit they'd tried 3 times to attack her bank which, thankfully, had no money in it.

It doesn't take much but actually engaging brain before clicking is a useful exercise. However the major companies could avoid a lot of this by tagging mails which do not match the sender to a known address (say yahoo or ebay or the banks), with a warning. Wouldn't be hard but they'd rather waste money on Siri than make your life easier.

Kaz, I think that people like myself, Suff, and your Mick get so exasperated with these scams because their avoidance is so simple.

I cannot really comment on the man scammed out of 10k because I did not see it, but I suspect that somewhere in the tale there would have been a "too good to miss" aspect, which eventually led to the loss.