Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do. The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

cmgvd3lw , 5 months ago

Why do we have names for generations? Stupid.

Nachorella , 5 months ago

Yeah, it's become the new sports teams. Everyone loves blaming their problems on whatever generation they least identify with, when realistically there's no fair way to judge an entire generation and no fair way to compare groups with such large age gaps and wildly different experiences growing up.

twack , 5 months ago

Because "the youngest cohort falls for online scams more than the oldest cohort" means the same thing but communicates far less information.

yoshisaur , 5 months ago

wish i could say i’m surprised. i’m gen z myself and i’d say i’m pretty decent with not being an idiot with technology. i do the usual stuff like running firefox + uBlockOrigin and i’m also a linux user. anyways, people at my school are just… so dumb with technology. a bunch of people have lost permission to use their school chromebooks and a computer at school because they got malware on it. either by going to a pirate site or just clicking a random download button (my school doesn’t allow us to use adblockers). not to mention that most of them believe that macs cannot get malware. so yeah, i’m unfortunately not surprised with this

stardust , 5 months ago

I thank getting into pcgaming for pushing me towards tech literacy. With how simplified tech has gotten and most usage being phones it's not surprising so many are more clueless than boomers who were at least forced to use PCs in an office setting.

yoshisaur , 5 months ago

that’s similar to what happened to me. i wanted to make a ROM hack for super mario world. fast forward 3 years later and im now using a jailbroken iphone and dual booting win10 and fedora

skillissuer , 5 months ago

(my school doesn’t allow us to use adblockers)

wtf why

jvrava9 , 5 months ago

Because you can potentially install other extensions, chrome and edge will suck with uBO soon anyway, and you cant install exe's or chocolatey, too restricted.

yoshisaur , 5 months ago

yeah that’s probably it

yoshisaur , 5 months ago

i really wish i knew

jvrava9 , 5 months ago

Same here, people look at me like an alien when I say that I use an android (no root anything) or a jailbroken iPhone. I've met people that don't even understand the concept of a folder...

redditReallySucks , 5 months ago

Getting malware on a chromebook is hard. How did they manage that. I thought it was even more locked down than ios?

yoshisaur , 5 months ago

i’m honestly not sure. i should probably ask the school IT guy because he had to ban a few people from using chromebooks. we are allowed to download things so that’s probably it though.

lamabop , 5 months ago

Millennials are probably the best at avoiding scams.

Unfortunately we also have no money to scam anyway.

Altofaltception , 5 months ago

It's because of all that avocado toast.

AFC1886VCC , 5 months ago

I stopped eating avocado toast and now I own a mansion and 5 supercars.

Altofaltception , 5 months ago

I knew you could do it!

jaybone , 5 months ago

Plot twist: avocado toast is the scam.

MrBusiness , 5 months ago

Mmmmm scam

MentallyExhausted , 5 months ago

More scam, please

givesomefucks , 5 months ago

The cost of falling for those scams may also be surging for younger people: Social Catfish’s 2023 report on online scams found that online scam victims under 20 years old lost an estimated $8.2 million in 2017. In 2022, they lost $210 million.

Teenagers are bad at risk assessment...

This shouldn't shock anyone, but it makes boomers feel good about themselves and their lead addled brains can't handle the critical thinking to understand why this isn't the win they think it's is...

pavnilschanda , 5 months ago

True. As a kid I'd fall for scams all the time, constantly downloading malware that would crash the family computer.

lledrtx , 5 months ago

No way it went up 20x in 5yrs? There must be something weird with the data

givesomefucks , 5 months ago

Time online would naturally increase, but more importantly the pandemic would exacerbate that while also increasing the amount of people resorting to scamming.

There's multiple parts to the equation, called confounding variables.

EmergMemeHologram , 5 months ago

Honestly a lot actually has changed in that time.

So much info has leaked that it's a lot easier to phish users than ever. There are dumps of usernames and passwords, so you can know several websites they use as starting points for fraud.

Password reuse and credentials stuffing are also common now, which means if teens reuse passwords you can get into manu of their accounts.

Nommer , 5 months ago

And people have unirinically said that zoomers don't need to learn computers and tech because advancements in UI have made that obsolete.

Caligvla , 5 months ago

You mean kids don't have enough life experience to spot scams at first glance? No way!

eager_eagle , 5 months ago

I'm surprised. Just like that time I was the 1,000,000th visitor of this well reputable website back in the day.

AngryishHumanoid , 5 months ago

Gen Z are 11 to 26, younger when this study was done. Take out the youngest cohort of Gen Z and the oldest cohort of Boomers, then show me the new statistics. This is how you mislead with data.

Shady_Shiroe , 5 months ago

I feel like the scams are just more intracate nowadays.

Shdwdrgn , 5 months ago

They're really not. I got one just this morning, your credit has been placed on hold for your AmEx card, log in to update your info... Yeah ok I don't have any credit cards, and besides why is a pet boarding domain sending me AmEx emails? If you can't spot something that obvious then you really don't deserve to have a bank account.

Shady_Shiroe , 5 months ago

Have you seen the scams that spoof your banks phone number so it looks official, only way to check if it is real is to call back.

Shdwdrgn , 5 months ago

Are you referring to actual phone calls? I mean everyone should know by now that phone numbers can be easily spoofed, we see that in every call claiming we need a new credit card or car insurance. The easiest way to see if a call is a scam is to force them to go off-script. Like when they start asking for personal info like your SSN... you called me, why don't YOU know my information? Of course they'll say they need it to verify who I am, and I'll just tell them that they should already know who I am since they called me. Another big tell is if they want more than just the last four of your SSN... absolutely no legitimate agency will ask for the entire thing over the phone.

I guess it just depends on how much free time you have, but sometimes I just like messing with these people to waste their time. Some will get downright angry when they realize you have no intention of falling for their scam, but mostly they just hang up.

redditReallySucks , 5 months ago

Thats a dumb one but I had emails come from the real domain of the company.

Shdwdrgn , 5 months ago

Sounds like a company that shouldn't be trusted if they're getting hacked that easily?

Marin_Rider , 5 months ago

things will be worrying when people Deepfake family members

originalucifer , 5 months ago

genX are the perps. shhhh dont tell anyone. no one knows were here

rdyoung , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This is also why we are more likely to notice it. Some of us could teach the scanners a thing or two.

Asidonhopo , 5 months ago

Yeah I'd say growing up coding in Basic on DOS machines, and logging onto BBSes gives us a leg up over millenials who at best started with AOL and Windows 98

autotldr Bot , 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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“People that are digital natives for the most part, they’re aware of these things,” says Scott Debb, an associate professor of psychology at Norfolk State University who has studied the cybersecurity habits of younger Americans.

In one 2020 study published in the International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, Debb and a team of researchers compared the self-reported online safety behaviors of millennials and Gen Z, the two “digitally native” generations.

But because Gen Z relies on technology more often, on more devices, and in more aspects of their lives, there might just be more opportunities for them to encounter a bogus email or unreliable shop, says Tanneasha Gordon, a principal at Deloitte who leads the company’s data & digital trust business.

Staying safer online could involve switching browsers, enabling different settings in the apps you use, or changing how you store passwords, she noted.

Gordon floated the idea of major social media platforms sending out test phishing emails — the kind that you might get from your employer, as a tool to check your own vulnerabilities — which lead users who fall for the trap toward some educational resources.

But really, Guru says, the key to getting Gen Z better prepared for a world full of online scams might be found in helping younger people understand the systems that incentivize them to exist in the first place.

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