FYI: We did get the money back from PayPal after contacting them (a few days later/after the video). So no, the scammer didn't get money. And also, this video prevents many more people from actually giving them money anyway. WE SPONSORED OURSELVES: The CyberSkeleton foil shirt will close for sales on 8/4! This is the last chance to grab one: store.gamersnexus.net/products/limited-edition-foil-skeletal-cotton-t-shirt-with-pc-component-design Watch our video on the scam of Artesian Builds: th-cam.com/video/L2xMi7inB28/w-d-xo.html Watch our video on Intel's driver problems! th-cam.com/video/MjYSeT-T5uk/w-d-xo.html
This guy states truth! I expected some funny graphs and comparisons from scammer to scammer in terms of their scaming efficiency, scaming procedures, currency leeched etc.
I worked at a hospital where IT would send phishing emails themselves. If you opened the obviously shady link, you wound up in an all-day training seminar. Because you work at a damn hospital. Some people were repeat offenders. They eventually got their email privileges taken away. It's unfortunate that this happens, because it preys on vulnerable people. Not necessarily dumb, as Steve pointed out. Desperate can be an even stronger motivator. We really need to teach internet safety to kids starting around middle school. For a lot of reasons.
mate, that's incredible they actually took away email privileges. sounds like a baller IT department. also i have a friend who's hospital was on the end of a data ransoming thing so i totally get where they are coming from
@@mwborger7 hospitals have basically every piece of information you need on patients to ID theft them. Hospital information systems are the ultimate honeypot for cybercrime.
To everyone thinking about answering one of these scammers: If there was a giveaway, it would obviously be mentioned in the video description, a pinned comment from the channel, or the video itself. It would not be in a random reply to a comment. Especially not in dozens of replies to different comments.
Even that is not a safe way to not get scammed. I had it happen to me on the day that a giveaway was happening and still it was a scam. I bailed just in time luckily...
Slightly off topic but also, if you are buying something legitimate online, never pay on PayPal via Friends & Family, since 99% of the time PayPal cannot refund your money in the case of a scam. Always pay via Goods & Services, and if the seller insists otherwise, they are most likely trying to scam you
It's not about PayPal not being able to refund you. It's PayPal's business model to sell buyers protection as service. Opting out of this obviously is not giving you the service
I knew a guy who was unable to get any protection as he paid through Paypal on a Credit Card. This is in UK. PP and CC companies just said the other party was responsible
This is by Paypal rules, the buyer protection applies only for Goods & Services and that's why you pay the fee. If you send to "Friends & Family" there is no fee and no protection
@@eskimo4130 how does that even work? You have to pay from PP directly, and PP can take money from whatever (card, bank account, account balance) for the protection to work
Another important note to make to watchers is if someone asks you to use 'Friends and Family' and they aren't actually your friends and family, it is almost certainly a scam unless you 100% trust the seller. Using friends and family means you get no PayPal Buyer Protection so the scammers get away with it.
@@DerBärator Poor excuse, sounds like the weak stuff scammers push to fool people. (Even if you aren't a scammer yourself.) If you sell frequently enough make a legitimate business with insurance. Using "friends and family" is not a valid business model, there is no valid excuse to try and route around buyer protection as a seller. Mail stuff, certified and insured so the buyer has to sign on delivery that is you proof and protection.
One of the things I realized years ago as one of my friends finally had a kid who was old enough to be interested in and start using the Internet, is that kids desperately need some kind of "this is how to spot a scam, this is what kind of contests are real, this is how to check things out" education. I don't know if schools do this, but if not, parents really need to. In my friends case, a very large charge appeared on their phone bill and in getting to the bottom of it he found that his 8 year old son had seen one of those flashing banners saying he "won" some new console. So he clicked it excitedly and provided all the info the scammers needed to charge like $500 to his parents phone bill. For lots of parents who never got online until in their teens or adult years, they might not realize how susceptible little kids are to many of the tactics scammers use. Heck, plenty of adults aren't that great at it either. It's a tough nut to crack, but videos like this one certainly do help I am sure. More people should talk about it.
my school did it in elementary, but like in 3rd grade. and as far as i know younger gen z/alpha are not getting that type of info in schools, which is weird considering they get ipads shoved in their face from the moment they’re born
At work the cybersecurity team upped their internal phishing tests from "blatantly obvious" to just "obvious". They had to start hosting remedial classes there were so many repeat "victims"
@@Melanie16040 We had someone in payroll fall for an email for a random gmail account claiming to be the CEO wanting to update their bank details. We had a senior exec refuse to change his AD/M365 password after he clicked on a phishing link that we knew he had interacted with, and when we reset it he blew his top. We sent him a phishing test two weeks later and he followed the link and entered his password. And again refused to reset his password.
To be fair, I not only click on those, but I archive them to click on them again a few days later because I always had a sneaking suspicion that they tracked how many hits those links get. Now that I know, I'm gonna be sure to keep doing that just because.
16:28 Haha who would have thought RuneScape scams from 20 years ago were great life lessons, they definitely prevented me losing anything actually important later in life.
I used ro play a game called Neocron around 20 odd years ago, and that was riddled with scams and exploits you could do to rip other people off for their in game money too. It was amazing lol, but deffo taught us all to be wary who played it.
dude runescape has saved our lives multiple times! I was watching this video recently where this guy ran a -" send me your bitcoin and ill double it scam". ON TWITTER. AND PEOPLE FELL FOR IT ! imagine that! and thats like the oldest most basic runescape scam lmao!!! how people even fall for this shit is beyond me, like if you are that stupid and you missed all those red flags then probably you deserve to get scammed ? is what i think.
If you trust me enough I'll give you this party hat, but you have to prove I can trust you by dropping your armor on the ground first. Don't worry it's safe because I can't see it.
It'd be real nice if TH-cam actually did something about these scams instead of letting them run rampant, but I guess removing public dislikes to protect the fragile egos of corporate partners is more important to TH-cam these days.
"something" like bring back downvotes? because they removed the downvotes from the count. I hate it so much because this wasn't how youtube was for years and years.
Right? Can't hardly comment on a yt video anymore without some shitbag replying trying to scam you. Hopefully this video will help people avoid falling for this crap.
I recommend to people to condition themselves to think that everything is a scam. I don't even click links in official emails from my bank because those are really easy to fake, I read the email and then go to the bank's site directly.
Banks in the Netherlands often chose to never send e-mails out to clients, only printed post and maybe notifications in their official apps. Exactly for the reason you gave.
Yours is a good policy. People need to learn how to break the scam chain. Don't get lead down the garden path. Be inquisitive but investigate your own way. Not how you're being directed to. Often when an institution learns of scams being perpetrated in their name they're interested in what's going on themselves. As it is their reputation that is being besmirched.
People in the cybersecurity field have a term for this. "TNO" Trust No One. If a message from a trusted contact is asking for info or money, contact them directly via another verified means. (phone, SMS, etc)
I deal with this a lot at my tech support job, I even had one customer who was so paranoid after they got scammed they wouldn't even trust us to help them even after phoning us first, I told them they could verify our caller id or walk directly into the office and they still wouldn't come. My advice is never stay on the line with suspicious calls, hang up and contact them back through their website or listed phone number. And if you get an email like "renew your Netflix subscription" don't click the link, instead go to the website directly and check your account settings.
It is amusing to have fun with such scammers by saying "Okay I'll call your office number, I just looked it up on Google" and how they panic trying to get you not to.
so sad. I recall when I was buying on ebay (before paypal was mandatory) and wanted to pay for my item, so I asked them for their bank details so that I can wire them the money and they replied "nice try! We are not giving you our IBAN so that you can scam us!"
Something really important about scammers who call you saying there is something wrong with your bank account, please call . I don't know if this is the case for mobile phones, but for landlines the connection is still open for a bit (how long varies from carrier to carrier, it can be as much as 15 seconds) after you hang up. The scammer calls you and plays a robot message about something scary, and gives you a real number of your bank to call. You hang up, pick up, and dial your bank. Except you aren't dialing your bank, you are still on the line with the scammer, just sending them button tones. They'll make it as realistic as possible, a ringing coming from their end, maybe an automated menu system to "direct" your call and enter your account number, etc. How do you know if the original call connection is actually closed? You don't! Thanks telcos! You can do two things: wait a minute for two after hanging up (that should definitely be long enough) and/or deliberately misdial the number you were told to call - if it goes through, you're still connected.
Love the opening of this video. "I shouldn't have to make this video, but here we are!" Thank you for telling your audience not to shame those who do fall for these sorts of things. Anyone could fall for it, if the right conditions (mood, exhaustion, desperation) are met. Also, nice shout-out to Jim Browning. Great recognizes great.
I have so many corporate clients who get fooled by stuff like this. Either by links, hijacked accounts, or spoofed emails. They usually go after the accounting departments which results in so much money being sent out before they realize and call us.
This is why my company has so many people that deal with receiving of goods and paying invoices. For my facility, on part of my job is I have to approve every nearly every invoice before accounting will pay it. Honestly, they view I do not approve I really wish they would send me first as well. I am at the facility several days per week, so have a pretty good idea what is going on in terms of services. All good have to be manually received and I check against that record. No record of the item being received, I wont let the invoice move. All purchase requests also come through me, so I see both sides of the process. Without the approve purchase, there is nothing to receive against in the event we get an unsolicited box of junk. It is pretty rare to see a scam, but I do catch a lot of accidental silliness that costs money all the same. Companies have some many controls in place because of the long history of people being dishonest.
I am 61, started on internet back with a windows 3.1 computer... 1994, never been scammed, or had a virus since... It amazes me how many DUMB Computer Users are out there... So many of the Y Gens, want things for free, instead off, getting a job and buying it...
@@graemejohnson9025 used PC's prior to win 3.1 also learned about scams early on. They really don't teach about scams on purpose. Should be a requirement, but the government wouldn't require such a thing cause they're to busy being corrupt with our tax money.
Personally, I find it quite amazing that social media platforms have algorithms in place to prevent you from cussing someone out by immediately removing your comment and banning your account, but act like they are powerless when it comes to protecting people from scams and other forms of abuse which use very specific language.
they put in filters to block common words used in the scams, but the recent wave of bots had all the filtered words in their name, written with emojis and symbols, which TH-cam apparently doesn't filter. The bots have started to disappear, though, so they're clearly changing tactic again. TH-cam just takes forever to do anything and it doesn't help that not everyone report the scammers
To be fair, it’s extremely easy to just check for a predetermined list of bad words in your comment, rather than determining whether or not your comment is a scam. Considering there are billions of users on youtube, I would say that it is impossible to create a system robust enough to detect messages like that even 50% of the time, so the only thing youtube can really up their ante on is the reporting system.
@@andriidesu2936 Ban emoji's in usernames, ban program names in usernames, do fancy regex to filter comments.. The ones that actually talk like humans would be hard to pickup, sure, but so many of the obvious scam messages still include some various key phrases in their content which should be enough to make a decently accurate anti-spam system. I mean, one guy did it because TH-cam wouldn't, it'd be stupid to think a company like Google doesn't have the capability. I feel like they just setup and AI to manage youtube then left the building.
@@andriidesu2936 What you're saying is true, but the fact is they aren't even trying. Many of the scams use the *exact same language* every single time. The crypto 'investment advisor' scams are even worse, they unroll an entire preprogrammed conversation with the same *conversation* every single time, right down to the misplaced punctuation or word strangely left by itself on its own line. There's simply no effort being made. Technically, not quite character for character identical because they do change the contact name and number... but nothing else is changed. On the bright side, the complete failure to police the scammers and let them just use the exact same script every time does make the scripts even more obvious, if that helps anything. I guess it means people are less likely to get scammed twice by the same scheme.
Great to see you keep informing the community of these scams, rather than simply giving up on it and let it run its course like many other TH-camrs do these days.
Let me explain actually, there is logic behind making scam look... this way. Same thing as Nigerian Prince emails, i's all about getting anyone more suspicious/etc away early, so they don't waste time on you, and only people who they think are easier to convince are going to fall for it, so scammers waste less time.
@@agentoranj5858 The ability to spot deception, and strong logic/reasoning skills, surprising aren't one in the same. Some of the most gullible and trusting people I know are also some of the most intelligent. And a democracy that gates off people based on the strength of their vote would go to shit real quick. Our systems might be inefficient but the fact we're living in luxury (comparatively) and aren't tearing are heads off in revolution, means it's the best system we ever had.
kinda same as cults, where they quickly filter out the more reasonable people (which is the vast/dominant majority) out at the earlier intro phases only leaving the ones truly gullible deeper into their scam scheme
They have. You can block users, you can block comments with keywords, you can completely disable comments, etc etc Matter of fact the reason you can’t use external links in TH-cam comments is an effort to block scammers. Does it work? Of course not. Criminals work around systems and laws put in place to stop them…it’s what makes them criminals. Like with the external links being blocked you and I now have to pay for the crimes of others. Saying it’s disgraceful that the bank got robbed because it didn’t have better security is naive at best. There is absolutely nothing TH-cam can do to stop crime, criminals will always find a way just like they already have.
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
These guys almost got me. The channel I was watching did have a giveaway running at the time which made it all that more believable. I did locate a genuine business email address for the channel in question and emailed for confirmation when they started asking for money for my free pc and it went no further.
Don't take it too hard, most people have enough to think about during their day, work, family, bills etc. Sometimes maybe you're too tired to figure out what's going on. It's a shame that youtube does literally nothing to stop this from going on.
But the takeaway here is that as soon as you were asked for money you knew it was a scam. That’s the point. It may not be immediately obvious when you receive a communication that something is a scam as it depends on the sophistication of the scammer (thankfully most of them can barely spell or construct proper sentences), but you can always be sure it’s a scam as soon as they ask for money, so you used your common sense and therefore didn’t get scammed.
I almost fell for a scam once. And looking back it was incredibly embarrassing. But you're right, it was because I was in such a moment of desperation. I wanted to believe something had gone right.
There's so much going on today it is easy to make a mistake. You really have to be cynical to survive. Being that way can be tiresome though. We all like to think things are better than they actually are.
@@1pcfred You also have to remember that people used to have fewer interactions with strangers than before the internet or even telephone/telegrams. You might get scammed by rando salesmen or something, but you'd generally know who to trust in your usual daily life. Now, 1,000 scammers can contact you in an hour or places 1,000 scam calls or post 1,000 scam comments on a TH-cam video. They all have access to you all the time now.
@@sovereign1160 well yeah. Basically anyone asking for money on the Internet is more than likely a scammer. Unless you asked for something from them first, that is. But if it is an unsolicited demand/ask for cash then it's most likely some kind of a scam. Everyone needs money I suppose. Some just don't care how they get it.
There's a saying in Russian - suckers are no mammoths, they won't go extinct. Scammers are well aware of that. Thanks for going out of your way to raise awareness!
You're right. The Russian people pretty much lives by this. When they're not eating propaganda raw they're refusing to take responsibility for their government. As long as you call yourself a democracy the Russian is directly responsible for its government's actions.
Whether you've won a giveaway or are just buying something from someone online, never ever use Friends and Family on PayPal. You cannot get a refund through Friends and Family. There is no buyer protection. It's literally meant just for trusted friends and family. It is a scammer's best friend, because everyone naturally assumes with PayPal you have that protection, but you don't unless it's Goods and Services. Also Cashapp has absolutely no refund option. Nor do most other services they use.
yup. these days, those people are getting too sneaky. they even managed to sms me saying i have a package delivering to my place when i never placed an order during those weeks. i clicked on the link and saw they want to charge me 20 cents for it to be delivered but guess what, they have an option to fill in your full name and credit card details and i immediately backed out and realise the sender was from “INFO”. Apparently, they have been doing since last year.
I really would like to see an interview (probably with the victim being anonymous) where someone explains how they fell for these scams. Because the amount of bots and way they spam just makes it confusing to me that, at least when it comes to the scams in TH-cam, anyone can fall for it.
It's simple, some people really are just dumb. Now sometimes it's medical or something but a lot of the time it's just not everyone is smart enough to catch onto things being a scam. Nothing you can do about it aside from edcuate your family and friends so they don't fall for it and report the scam comments/accounts.
I've had dozens of people (who appealed their ban.. out of hundreds of banned) on discord who got their discord hacked through a scam. When asking them it's either they don't tell, or they say they were stupid, yes lots of stupid around. But basically no one wants to show exactly what happened, haven't found one yet
@@DedmenMiller The best advice is two fold: 1. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. 2. If it at all feels abnormal/odd/off it's a scam. There are many times I can tell something is a scam without being able to figure out exactly how it's a scam.. Report, block, move on
I like how he gave them a well deserved bad review, two hours would be an outrageous amount of time to waste on a legitimate purchase, let alone a scam.. Pro scammers could have drained the life savings of six little old ladies in that amount of time, these guys suck at scamming.
I almost can't believe that youtube hasn't done anything about this. Too bad they're too busy licking the toes of corporations that are slightly inconvenienced by dislikes on free online content...
Thank you for the pinned comment explaining that the money didn't go to them. This was very very painful to watch, even if intentional, I hate to see anyone get scammed, but knowing it "failed" for the scammers is good though. A much better followup would be GN trolling GN scammers and make them make a fool of themselves, very much like the "New Oregon" state example.
it is possible the got the money and just have a negative balance in their paypal...ive had someone dispute something.. they got refunded immediately and my paypal went into the negatives and i ended up owing paypal until i won the dispute. im not sure how paypal works in other with social security numbers and such.. but its totally possible they still walked away with money unfortunately.
Thank you for raising awareness about this. People ARE being scammed and I HOPE this sort of video will prevent some from falling for this in the future.
"Can you get me a discount because you are famous?" - hilarious! On a serious note, thanks for this video. Hopefully lots of people see it and learn about this stuff.
Man I can’t even win a pc through scam comments lol. I always wondered the amount of work required to get scammed this way and am happy to know I would have given up much earlier in the process
Linus Sebastian was going over the scam comments and he was like ah, I'm too lazy to be comment scammed. Although, he did get scammed by someone who had infiltrated one of his contractors.
A lot of the fault, for the multiplication of scammers, bots and other online germs, lies with the users, rather than the admins, because they've stopped being pro-active and washing their hands :)
This happened to me recently actually. An animation channel I watch uploaded a video about a free Adobe AE crack... And I fell for it. It didn't match their usual content at all, which are usually Flip-A-Clip animations, but the more I tried to analyze it, the more I just wanted to try it and see if it worked. I wanted better software than the stuff I'm still using, even though I've gotten really good at using it with all it's quirks. But my TH-cam account(s) also got hacked, and started posting similar videos. I changed my passwords, turned on 2FA, and cleared any devices I didn't use. I'm still trying to get my other channel back after it got banned for the content. I later found a Trojan and a Trojan Bitcoin miner in easy to access areas, and deleted them manually. Because I know Windows Protection won't do garb when it comes to finding that stuff. But yeah, I felt really stupid when it didn't work, other than the split second command prompt that popped up, showing that the virus was installing itself. :) Don't be stupid. I always had this feeling that I'd never fall for something like this, and I did. Now I know to keep stuff locked up tight, even if it takes a couple more seconds to sign into stuff.
The irony is I got hit up by one of the clowns the other day and wasted like an hour of his time. Amazing you made a video about it two days later, Thanks for making people aware of the scam.. though I feel bad people really need this sort of warning. One is born every minute they say.
@@DrakkarCalethiel My scammer was more active and at least tried to pretend to be the youtuber in question. So I wasted an hour of his time, but this guy wasted over 2HR of GN time. I hate scammers so much.. Scambaiter is an amazing view into how scammers work.
the ones claiming to be "scammed" are scammers also. they'll whine and cry in front of the content creators in an off chance that the creators feel pity and reimburse them.
the real scammers were the people that get scammed... bro you're so smart, bro. good thing i am the most smartest person alive (just like you, bro) and i will NEVER fall for any scam. because that's you know, what not smart people do. and we're the smartest, bro. bro you are so correct. we're all about that no scam life, bro. dude that's so true.... oh and also you should rewatch 4:30 like once or thrice
could be, also could be that you are just over-paranoid. Sure everyone and everything is a scammer ey... there are no victims from scammers you claim ? LMAO.
The surprise and depressing frustration in Steve's voice was delicious. I don't think he had realized how much effort it takes to get scammed by one of these people, or how obvious the scams are. No address? Come on people. Be smarter with your money!
I think it's more often intentional than not. Only the really stupid/easy marks ignore those obvious red flags. Less time wasted on ppl who at some point recognize what's going on.
These scams are classic and have been around for ages. I remember a long long time ago seeing letters that would come home saying that You just won something, but need to pay for processing or shipping. Now these scams are preying on people and succeeding because of the reach of the internet.
Thanks for helping spread awareness and knowledge on the subject. Watched my brother get scammed out of money for a car earlier this year, did everything I could after that to educate my family on how to identify scams but there are too many different ways they come at you. My mom got hit a month later. We need to figure out how to protect those that can't see through the smoke screen.
This stuff is running rampant. Seeing this on many channels. Every time I see them it makes me sad, because they work. They wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't producing results.
but do you also report them to youtube if you encounter them ? Not that it will change anything i'm sure, i even suspect it is done by some youtube employees who can abuse their positions in the company to do this.
The slow pace of the scammer is either due to having a lot of fish on the line or to get someone into the sunk cost fallacy with regards to time invested
I would've sent them 5 bucks, then just use the browser dev tools to edit the $159.09 in before taking the screenshot. If they question just say the remainder got lost on the way to New Oregon
It's easy for people who are tech literate to totally dismiss these guys very easily but the main issue at hand is that for every tech literate person out there, there's THOUSANDS who aren't well versed in this kind of stuff. Scams like this hurt real people and in some cases it could ruin their lives, especially when they target the elderly. It's cruel and incorrigible and I hope to god TH-cam does something because I'm sick of it. I can't imagine the hardship big TH-camrs have to go through when they get message after message from people saying the big TH-camr scammed them.
@@virtuallifeform A problem is that legitimate giveaways do sometimes happen, so if you know about that you might just think you're one of those lucky people. Obviously legitimate giveaways don't happen in comments but you can't expect most people to know that unless they've seen this scam before.
@@zea_64 "You can't expect most people to know that", that's certainly true - but I would hope they'd have a SINGLE MOTE of common sense and wise up. Can't expect people to use common sense, I suppose that's also true.
@@SmogginMog i've read (in this comment section) everything from, the people are not smart, to not tech literate, to greedy and a bunch in between. I'll just point to the lotto. People are not making it like they used to. This influences decisions more than you think.
I did almost fall for the first of these I encountered (was thrilled that my favourite content creator was "interacting" with me), but could not verify the address, so looked it up on line and discovered it's yet another online scam. I can't even go one day without someone trying to scam me these days....
I felt the same when it happened to me just the other day. It wasn't so much about the giveaway (and this TH-camr does do giveaways occassionally, so I thought it was a special Christmas thing) than about her chatting with me. There were some red flags, but I ignored them for a moment. Then they became too many (the UPS account I was asked to contact for the shipping had spelling mistakes and wanted my photo (what for?!), the way she chatted with me was somewhat impersonal, and it was unlikely she would give away such an expensive gift). But, yes, for a moment I was just excited I got the chance to chat with her.
You should make a limited edition "I got scammed" shirt or something like that, and then when you advertise it at the start of your videos, it'll subconsciously remind people not to fall for these scams!
@@andrew6239 Because it's fucking common sense. If you seriously fall for a very fake looking account, that's your own fault and problem. "He did it for money" Is that why he spent his own hard earned money on a scam for a video that shouldn't need to be made?
Sadly Steve, the people that fall for these scams are so gullible that no amount of warning will stop them. Most Normal people see these things and know it's a scam a mile away. That's also why people that are scammed once will usually be scammed many times. Appreciate the content.
I'm sure some of these "scammed" people are the actual scammers too, trying to get you to give them money for the pity or public image. I refuse to believe every single person who claims they fall for this incredibly obvious scam are real.
@@yaldabaoth2 Scammers will go to extreme lengths for the smallest gain financially if they have invested a lot of time into a scam. If there is any kind of profit to be made they will do it.
As someone working with Information Security for nearly a decade, I feel for the victims. It's easy to paint them being stupid, somewhat greedy to not realize when something's too good to be true. When people fall for scams, they feel embarrassed because people infer their stupidity and naivety from this. In this age, social engineering topics like phishing, spoofing, prepending are much larger threat to an average person than things like data leak or malwares. However, there is a simple enough cure for this, just be aware and do your due diligence/care.
Also we have to remember that some folks are from different countries and have grown up in very different environments from us. Maybe common PC and internet knowledge is not so common for them. Maybe that particular person spent all their childhood on a farm and know everything about how to work tractors and animals but don't know much about scammers on the internet? We don't know and we shouldn't judge without knowing what happened.
@@baverfjant To be honest I grew up in a place where I got to smell cow manure every day. Trust me, it isn't about where you grow up, it is about how you grew up, and about your hard coded willingness to accept things that are too good to be true because maybe this time it is. Honestly, all the farmers I know are pretty hard core, jaded, "what's that something is free? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" types. It is actually a very serious, very by the numbers, work your ass off avoid risk as much as possible sort of lifestyle.
Everyone has a pitch they'll fall for, be it a scam or a cult or an abusive relationship. There's never any shame in 'falling for' something. All you can do after is take note of what it was, and find ways to guard against falling for it and others like it in the future.
Good on you for doing this. It's not just your channel these scammers haunt. They are everywhere on TH-cam. The more people are aware of this stuff the lower the hit rate these scammers can achieve.
Steve's endless compassion when talking about consumers, and in this case, viewers who get scammed, is one of the reasons I keep coming back to this channel.
ya, I definitely feel the conflict in him between "This is the scammers taking advantage of people's hopes and dreams, we shouldn't blame the victims" but also "I can't believe our viewers are this dumb, I thought our audience was above average"
@@fusi0ncatalyst191 And that is a human thing to do. We all live in our little bubbles and it is hard to correct yourself all the time. But we should all try!
The fact you spent REAL MONEY just to prove to us viewers that they are in fact a scam is just on another level of commitment. Thank you again for the continued educational and entertaining contet GN! Also bought the limited shirt as soon as it was announced. Can't wait to receive it!!!
Thanks so much for the support! And happy to spend it for something like this. We've seen enough viewers fall for it and hopefully this stops anymore from falling prey to the scams.
@@GamersNexus Don't pat yourself on the back for this. You either fed a shark a bucket of human blood and gave it a taste - or you kept it healthy for a little while longer.
What hurts the most is thinking about how my parents and grand parents use TH-cam, if people who are tech savvy like me can fall for this , they could fall victim to this as well , share and warn others as well
@@Rafaelinux I’m not saying I can , I’m saying people who watch this channel clearly fall for this , people who know tech so I can see my father falling for this as well
GN, you do give away stuff, and I've totally fallen for it. You give away the best reviews and PC knowledge anyone could ask for. My PC's have been scammed out of short, hot, suffocating existences.
Thank you! This is so important. One could just have their guards down for a second on some scams, others get people who are generally unexperienced, and some will just be as naive and they're shamelessly exploited. I felt a little pain when you gave them the money but if it keeps only one person from getting scammed it was totally worth it.
PLEASE DON'T GET SCAMMED PEOPLE! We should all push this to the scambaiting community. Jim Browning, Trilogy Media, Scammer Payback, Kitboga collabs would be great for TH-cam in general. Educate yourselves and others especially older people and have fun listening to scammers rage cuz they've had their time wasted!
@@1pcfred I can see that for a few of larger channels that run low on content but for some of the smaller guys I'm pretty certain a lot of them are legit. Especially Atomic Shrimp, who just does it occasionally as a sideline.
TH-cam: sees anything claiming is offensive but is not and purely entertaining. *removed* Also TH-cam: sees report after report about the scam bots. *pretends they're not there*
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
Either that or they scare off people from incorporating Nazi iconography or other sensitive matters even if they were used in a scholarly context, fearing that it's some fascist propaganda when it is NOT. No wonder why reactionaries came up with equally vile platforms such as BitChute and Parler.
I remember the convincing scam where the scammer uses the name tag of the email to say its from amazon while hiding the long fake email address. Probably the better phishing I've seen outside of targeted phishing. The name tag is really convient, but holy cow if people weren't checking the actual address.
The best one I ever saw was a word for word duplicate with the same colors of my normal remote login page for a part time job I had. Everything was perfectly normal until it said my password was wrong and I needed to change it. Then it pops up a box for social security number to verify your identity. That one almost got me!
I love the scams I get for things I'm not even involved with. Your Facebook account has been hacked! That's nice. I don't even have a Facebook account. I probably get those a few times a month.
@@andersjjensen Best of luck When you send money to "friends and family" on PayPal, you basically wave them of any responsibility to get you your money back
I almost fell for such a scam,very fortunate I got sceptical soon enough.But Im still feeling a bit stupid,that I didnt identify it immediatly.But anyway,better feeling dumb but learn a lesson than feeling smart to ignore it,but later fall for a better disguised scam...
The scams have infiltrated youtubes ads, did we expect them to actually bother with comments, especially after everything else that has happened within the last... what, like 10 years?
@@DctrGizmo True, but now aways it's either hour long videos to waste your time, or "Check out this simple device that has completely destroyed the multimillion dollar *blank* industry"
Yup, I work in IT and I see people of ALL ages get scammed from even the most obvious of scams. Sometimes these are even young CEOs or CFOs of start ups that have their own IT departments! These scammers are very creative and always adapting to modern trends you really have to be careful out there.
Young CEOs and 'entrepreneurs' are probably one of the most gullible and greedy groups of people on Earth, of course they fall for scams. I have a personal policy to never trust a man wearing a suit it has served me well, in my experience people who dress very smartly usually have something to hide unless they are ex police or military.
Thankfully, most scams people are likely to encounter are obvious and made by people who don't even know how to spell properly, let alone use proper grammar. Think about it: There's no way a legitimate company would hire someone with these deficiencies, as well as a complete lack of professionalism to be the "communicator/sales" representative.
@@GENKI_INU the thing is that's actually on purpose more often than not. Think of it as a weird gate keeping. By ruling out people who notice the mistakes they spend less effort on their catches.
The most outrageous part of this is TH-cam basically allowing it to continue. It's absolutely within their power to stop this, and shouldn't even be that difficult. It seems like they just don't care that criminal scum are ripping off their customers with relative impunity.
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
@@zengrath Convincing criminals not to commit crime is surprisingly harder than you think. It's not as simple as asking a scammer to "please stop scamming". Removing their platform, stopping their income, is the best way to remedy it. Who has the power to do that? Ding ding ding! TH-cam.
@@zengrath Yeah, people shouldn't be falling for it, but TH-cam should also be taking reasonable steps to prevent it. One doesn't need to exclude the other. If I run a bar, I can't completely stop hustlers ripping off my customers. Once I know about a hustler, however, I can throw them out, ban them, and keep an eye open for it happening again.
@@AtomixKingg You got it completely backwards and putting words in my mouth that i never said, it's people like you that's the problem. I'm not telling criminals to stop, i'm telling you people to stop. You people are the problem, not TH-cam, not the scammers, you. If you stop giving scammers money, if you stop funding the scammers, they would stop. The ONLY thing that will put an end to scammers if for scammers to lose their funding, for them to lose their funding you people need to stop giving them money. I'm absolutely completely angry at this point at people who blame youtube or blame government or blame scammers. No matter what TH-cam does, scammers will exist as long as you people give them the money. It's same issue with gold sellers in MMO's, you would think 20 years of gold sellers in MMO's that people would figure out finally that it's not the game developers that can put an end to it, it's the fucking people who can put an end to it by not buying gold from 3rd party gold sellers running sweat shops full of little kids in 3rd would countries. Stop blaming other people and take fucking responsibility for your own action. Stop and do fucking research before you send your money to anyone. Fucking stop already. Your making things worst for everyone.
In general I don't think you can help the majority of the type of people who fall for these scams. They're predisposed to it for whatever variety of reasons. Specially if they're not a child or elderly. Great video though, really interesting. And yeah it can happen to anyone, ie Jim browning but that's not a typical scenario. Stay alert friends ⚠️
The people falling for such scams are the same people that open links to websites in scam mails they are receiving at work and are putting in their login data on said websites. Having to send money to random accounts, especially when you supposedly "won" something, should be a big red flag. Working in IT for a large university, we get scam / phishing mails all the time and I'm glad that the people I'm responsible for are great at picking out scams and are also informing me, when they received some, so I can send out a warning and forward the mails to our central IT security which can get scam sites taken down. But I also heard from colleagues that they send out fake scam mails to test their employees and 60% (out of hundreds) fell for them... Also: Ask first, not only after you send money or put your login data into some website! PS: Seems that the same scam is also targeting viewers of other channels. Just saw that I got two of these scam messages at Retro Game Corps four days ago and just reported them. Very similar text. But why does TH-cam not offer "Scam" as an option as normal spam isn't as severe?
I feel like, at this point, creators should be filing class actions left and right against the platform. The amount of neglect which is hurting their creators and platform is too damn high!
@@svenabend360 A properly organized protest will shake yt to the core. They can't ban 100 big people and if they do, damage will triple, especially when this is YTs fault in the first place.
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
It's genuinely baffled me, in fact more so worried me for years how people fall for such blatant stuff. The mass use of phones has made things massively worse as people are silently (In a lot of cases) flipped from one site to another without knowing (Or knowing how to tell) where they are.... I was once part of a large survey regards online safety, and the Gen X'ers were by far the most well versed as far as safety online. These days there are people using PC's and they don't know the absolute basics which is half the problem. Many don't even know how to tell what 'website' they're on, the difference between files and folders, the simple things such as hovering over links and seeing the main domain that it leads to. Etc etc. There needs to be much more education in school and whatnot about browsing the web/being online, too much of it is focussed on crap programs that many will likely never use anyway.
Basic cybersecurity really is something that the vast majority of people are completely clueless about, that combined with the fact that most people are not encouraged to be critical thinkers. My statement to those that do fall for shoddily crafted scams is: "Well, that is unfortunate. Hopefully you will treat this as a lesson and try to learn something from this. The price of that lesson is what you lost to the scam." It is quite depressing that enough people keep falling for such things, that scamming is a thriving industry. Scammers are making enough money off of these poorly constructed scams to have entire teams and offices of scammer staff, not only that, but they pay their staff enough for them to live very comfortably. Unfortunately, the majority of these terribly crafted scams are not originating from actors that live in the United States or the UK, or from any other country that has relatively robust law enforcement action against such criminal activities, so holding the scammers accountable would normally be only a dream.
@@TH-camTookMyNickname.WhyNot Hah yeah I had a similar experience with a doctor's bill I didn't know I had from the hospital. I got a phone call from some named organization that was apparently a collection agency. They asked me who I was and then asked for proof of who I was by giving my birthdate and some information... I deadass said to them "How do I know who you are to give you my information? Tell me the month it starts with so I know this isn't a scam." The guy goes "I can't give you the personal information" and I said, "Then you're a scam, bye." I got a letter from them like 3 days later lmao.
Got a FB friend praising plug in electricity savers that claim to lower your electricity bill. By just plugging the device in. The Big Clive and Electroboom links may have been on their post but it was meant for others who may have been misled.
Thanks for doing something about this. Every TH-cam channel is aware of this, but most just tolerate it. Even TH-cam themselves don't seem to be doing anything about it. When I see these, I report the comment, also open the offending channel in a new tab where I go to the about page and report the channel for impersonation, and paste a link to the channel they're impersonating.
My favorite about these scams is the idiots who fall for it and then think the person the scammers were impersonating some how owe the scammed person restitution. Just when you think people can't get any more stupid, they up the ante.
What if that was their play all along. Create account pretending to be scammed by fake TH-cam account, message TH-camr. TH-camr takes pity on them or get scammed to prove a point
Hi Steve. Love this video. I consider myself to be very tech savvy, been using pcs for over 30 years since I was a child. I fell for a scam last year. It doesn't matter how much you know or how experienced you are, you can still fall for them. You could be tired or just have a brain fart and fall for it. I will happily tell everyone I fell for a scam to show that it can happen to literally anyone. Some of these scams are becoming pretty advanced these days.
I don't think I would have paid him just to make the point. Good scambaiting strings them along into increasingly proposterous situations until the scammer gives up. Rewarding him with $150 just keeps them going that much longer.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
FYI: We did get the money back from PayPal after contacting them (a few days later/after the video). So no, the scammer didn't get money. And also, this video prevents many more people from actually giving them money anyway.
WE SPONSORED OURSELVES: The CyberSkeleton foil shirt will close for sales on 8/4! This is the last chance to grab one: store.gamersnexus.net/products/limited-edition-foil-skeletal-cotton-t-shirt-with-pc-component-design
Watch our video on the scam of Artesian Builds: th-cam.com/video/L2xMi7inB28/w-d-xo.html
Watch our video on Intel's driver problems! th-cam.com/video/MjYSeT-T5uk/w-d-xo.html
Congrats Gamers Nexus, you've been shortlisted as a winner! Please message me for details...
See, it happens in TH-cam too...
Steve gets paid to get scamed - he wins the internet today
Every time I see one of those messages, I just report them and move on. It’s a pain because it’s like TH-cam whack-a-mole.
Been meaning to order one. Thanks for the reminder before I missed it!
I was totally expecting an hour long set of graphs that explained which scammer had the best thermals.
Underrated comment.
Their thermals go pretty high on scam baiting channels
This guy states truth! I expected some funny graphs and comparisons from scammer to scammer in terms of their scaming efficiency, scaming procedures, currency leeched etc.
and we were all going to watch the entire thing.
HAHAHA !
I worked at a hospital where IT would send phishing emails themselves. If you opened the obviously shady link, you wound up in an all-day training seminar. Because you work at a damn hospital.
Some people were repeat offenders. They eventually got their email privileges taken away.
It's unfortunate that this happens, because it preys on vulnerable people. Not necessarily dumb, as Steve pointed out. Desperate can be an even stronger motivator.
We really need to teach internet safety to kids starting around middle school. For a lot of reasons.
This is smart. Every business should do this.
Interesting. I've heard hospitals are common targets for ransomware attacks.
mate, that's incredible they actually took away email privileges. sounds like a baller IT department. also i have a friend who's hospital was on the end of a data ransoming thing so i totally get where they are coming from
@@mwborger7 hospitals have basically every piece of information you need on patients to ID theft them. Hospital information systems are the ultimate honeypot for cybercrime.
Nope, it preys on dumb people. I know plenty of vulnerable people who arent fucking stupid
To everyone thinking about answering one of these scammers: If there was a giveaway, it would obviously be mentioned in the video description, a pinned comment from the channel, or the video itself.
It would not be in a random reply to a comment. Especially not in dozens of replies to different comments.
I like answering them to harass the scammers.
Even that is not a safe way to not get scammed. I had it happen to me on the day that a giveaway was happening and still it was a scam. I bailed just in time luckily...
Slightly off topic but also, if you are buying something legitimate online, never pay on PayPal via Friends & Family, since 99% of the time PayPal cannot refund your money in the case of a scam. Always pay via Goods & Services, and if the seller insists otherwise, they are most likely trying to scam you
It's not about PayPal not being able to refund you. It's PayPal's business model to sell buyers protection as service. Opting out of this obviously is not giving you the service
@@petermuller608 Yep, basically
I knew a guy who was unable to get any protection as he paid through Paypal on a Credit Card. This is in UK. PP and CC companies just said the other party was responsible
This is by Paypal rules, the buyer protection applies only for Goods & Services and that's why you pay the fee. If you send to "Friends & Family" there is no fee and no protection
@@eskimo4130 how does that even work? You have to pay from PP directly, and PP can take money from whatever (card, bank account, account balance) for the protection to work
I almost fell for a scammer trying to trick me into winning a "free computer."
But he bailed because I didn't have enough Twitch subscribers.
Was this Artesian builds?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
this made me laugh...
Oof
@@CriKnight ...and autism comes to ruin the joke.
Another important note to make to watchers is if someone asks you to use 'Friends and Family' and they aren't actually your friends and family, it is almost certainly a scam unless you 100% trust the seller. Using friends and family means you get no PayPal Buyer Protection so the scammers get away with it.
And they also might tell you they are doing it for tax purposes
@@thepowerlies lmao so blatantly admitting to tax evasion?
@@setcheck67 yes but they know the buyer who thinks they will get a great deal wont care. Makes it more believable.
It also just puts the PayPal fee on you instead of them. If you sent the same amount as normal PayPal would deduct it on their end.
@@DerBärator Poor excuse, sounds like the weak stuff scammers push to fool people. (Even if you aren't a scammer yourself.) If you sell frequently enough make a legitimate business with insurance. Using "friends and family" is not a valid business model, there is no valid excuse to try and route around buyer protection as a seller. Mail stuff, certified and insured so the buyer has to sign on delivery that is you proof and protection.
One of the things I realized years ago as one of my friends finally had a kid who was old enough to be interested in and start using the Internet, is that kids desperately need some kind of "this is how to spot a scam, this is what kind of contests are real, this is how to check things out" education. I don't know if schools do this, but if not, parents really need to. In my friends case, a very large charge appeared on their phone bill and in getting to the bottom of it he found that his 8 year old son had seen one of those flashing banners saying he "won" some new console. So he clicked it excitedly and provided all the info the scammers needed to charge like $500 to his parents phone bill. For lots of parents who never got online until in their teens or adult years, they might not realize how susceptible little kids are to many of the tactics scammers use. Heck, plenty of adults aren't that great at it either. It's a tough nut to crack, but videos like this one certainly do help I am sure. More people should talk about it.
my school did it in elementary, but like in 3rd grade. and as far as i know younger gen z/alpha are not getting that type of info in schools, which is weird considering they get ipads shoved in their face from the moment they’re born
At work the cybersecurity team upped their internal phishing tests from "blatantly obvious" to just "obvious".
They had to start hosting remedial classes there were so many repeat "victims"
Ours are literally from an external email address and people still believe it's real, even with [WARNING - EXTERNAL] in the subject line....
Oh do tell... I'd love to hear how obvious they were
@@Melanie16040 We had someone in payroll fall for an email for a random gmail account claiming to be the CEO wanting to update their bank details. We had a senior exec refuse to change his AD/M365 password after he clicked on a phishing link that we knew he had interacted with, and when we reset it he blew his top. We sent him a phishing test two weeks later and he followed the link and entered his password. And again refused to reset his password.
To be fair, I not only click on those, but I archive them to click on them again a few days later because I always had a sneaking suspicion that they tracked how many hits those links get. Now that I know, I'm gonna be sure to keep doing that just because.
@@bosco4533 Well, that does solidly fit in with the level of expectations I have of others in society these days... Holy hell though... Just Wow...
16:28 Haha who would have thought RuneScape scams from 20 years ago were great life lessons, they definitely prevented me losing anything actually important later in life.
yo jarrod i recently picked up a used laptop with a 2070 super and an i7 10875h with 16gb ddr4 and a 2tb nvme for £650, decent deal?
@@kushy_TV laptop 😹💀
I used ro play a game called Neocron around 20 odd years ago, and that was riddled with scams and exploits you could do to rip other people off for their in game money too. It was amazing lol, but deffo taught us all to be wary who played it.
dude runescape has saved our lives multiple times! I was watching this video recently where this guy ran a -" send me your bitcoin and ill double it scam". ON TWITTER. AND PEOPLE FELL FOR IT ! imagine that! and thats like the oldest most basic runescape scam lmao!!! how people even fall for this shit is beyond me, like if you are that stupid and you missed all those red flags then probably you deserve to get scammed ? is what i think.
If you trust me enough I'll give you this party hat, but you have to prove I can trust you by dropping your armor on the ground first. Don't worry it's safe because I can't see it.
It'd be real nice if TH-cam actually did something about these scams instead of letting them run rampant, but I guess removing public dislikes to protect the fragile egos of corporate partners is more important to TH-cam these days.
"something" like bring back downvotes? because they removed the downvotes from the count. I hate it so much because this wasn't how youtube was for years and years.
Google has been in bed with scammers for ever, it ain’t gonna change.
Don’t be stupid and you won’t get scammed
um yes. They only want videos not recommended for children, PLAYING for children and make sure the dislike count is gone!~ it may be a BAD VIDEO.
Right? Can't hardly comment on a yt video anymore without some shitbag replying trying to scam you. Hopefully this video will help people avoid falling for this crap.
It's so nice that Steve mentions Jim Browning, an angel on the internet along with Scambaiter, Devear and his team too.
I would pay so much money to see a collaboration between GN and Jim Browning.
Send it to my paypal and ill send you nothing in return ;P
Meh. Computer and sports guy? Gonna have to be creative
@@LeoMajor1 the guy that scams scammers
Or Kitboga
@@JeevaDotNet ooooh my bad
I recommend to people to condition themselves to think that everything is a scam. I don't even click links in official emails from my bank because those are really easy to fake, I read the email and then go to the bank's site directly.
Banks in the Netherlands often chose to never send e-mails out to clients, only printed post and maybe notifications in their official apps. Exactly for the reason you gave.
Yours is a good policy. People need to learn how to break the scam chain. Don't get lead down the garden path. Be inquisitive but investigate your own way. Not how you're being directed to. Often when an institution learns of scams being perpetrated in their name they're interested in what's going on themselves. As it is their reputation that is being besmirched.
your bank shouldn't send you link the the first place. That's on them IMO
People in the cybersecurity field have a term for this. "TNO" Trust No One. If a message from a trusted contact is asking for info or money, contact them directly via another verified means. (phone, SMS, etc)
@@byron_00 that's it. Go around the path they've laid out. Verify what's really going on.
I deal with this a lot at my tech support job, I even had one customer who was so paranoid after they got scammed they wouldn't even trust us to help them even after phoning us first, I told them they could verify our caller id or walk directly into the office and they still wouldn't come. My advice is never stay on the line with suspicious calls, hang up and contact them back through their website or listed phone number. And if you get an email like "renew your Netflix subscription" don't click the link, instead go to the website directly and check your account settings.
It is amusing to have fun with such scammers by saying "Okay I'll call your office number, I just looked it up on Google" and how they panic trying to get you not to.
no offense, but "you called us" isn't a good argument. so many of those internet malware scams trick customers into calling them...
so sad. I recall when I was buying on ebay (before paypal was mandatory) and wanted to pay for my item, so I asked them for their bank details so that I can wire them the money and they replied "nice try! We are not giving you our IBAN so that you can scam us!"
*Phoning the scammer first is one of the top scams, duh.* You must not know Pierogi
Something really important about scammers who call you saying there is something wrong with your bank account, please call . I don't know if this is the case for mobile phones, but for landlines the connection is still open for a bit (how long varies from carrier to carrier, it can be as much as 15 seconds) after you hang up. The scammer calls you and plays a robot message about something scary, and gives you a real number of your bank to call. You hang up, pick up, and dial your bank. Except you aren't dialing your bank, you are still on the line with the scammer, just sending them button tones. They'll make it as realistic as possible, a ringing coming from their end, maybe an automated menu system to "direct" your call and enter your account number, etc.
How do you know if the original call connection is actually closed? You don't! Thanks telcos!
You can do two things: wait a minute for two after hanging up (that should definitely be long enough) and/or deliberately misdial the number you were told to call - if it goes through, you're still connected.
Love the opening of this video. "I shouldn't have to make this video, but here we are!"
Thank you for telling your audience not to shame those who do fall for these sorts of things. Anyone could fall for it, if the right conditions (mood, exhaustion, desperation) are met. Also, nice shout-out to Jim Browning. Great recognizes great.
I have so many corporate clients who get fooled by stuff like this. Either by links, hijacked accounts, or spoofed emails. They usually go after the accounting departments which results in so much money being sent out before they realize and call us.
This is why my company has so many people that deal with receiving of goods and paying invoices. For my facility, on part of my job is I have to approve every nearly every invoice before accounting will pay it. Honestly, they view I do not approve I really wish they would send me first as well. I am at the facility several days per week, so have a pretty good idea what is going on in terms of services. All good have to be manually received and I check against that record. No record of the item being received, I wont let the invoice move. All purchase requests also come through me, so I see both sides of the process. Without the approve purchase, there is nothing to receive against in the event we get an unsolicited box of junk. It is pretty rare to see a scam, but I do catch a lot of accidental silliness that costs money all the same. Companies have some many controls in place because of the long history of people being dishonest.
I am 61, started on internet back with a windows 3.1 computer... 1994, never been scammed, or had a virus since...
It amazes me how many DUMB Computer Users are out there...
So many of the Y Gens, want things for free, instead off, getting a job and buying it...
@@graemejohnson9025 you do realise that most of the people who get scammed are the elderly?
@@graemejohnson9025 not everyone are internet savvy bruh, especially elderly. also kids are also vulnerable as they don't have experience at all
@@graemejohnson9025 used PC's prior to win 3.1 also learned about scams early on. They really don't teach about scams on purpose. Should be a requirement, but the government wouldn't require such a thing cause they're to busy being corrupt with our tax money.
Personally, I find it quite amazing that social media platforms have algorithms in place to prevent you from cussing someone out by immediately removing your comment and banning your account, but act like they are powerless when it comes to protecting people from scams and other forms of abuse which use very specific language.
they put in filters to block common words used in the scams, but the recent wave of bots had all the filtered words in their name, written with emojis and symbols, which TH-cam apparently doesn't filter. The bots have started to disappear, though, so they're clearly changing tactic again. TH-cam just takes forever to do anything and it doesn't help that not everyone report the scammers
1984
To be fair, it’s extremely easy to just check for a predetermined list of bad words in your comment, rather than determining whether or not your comment is a scam. Considering there are billions of users on youtube, I would say that it is impossible to create a system robust enough to detect messages like that even 50% of the time, so the only thing youtube can really up their ante on is the reporting system.
@@andriidesu2936 Ban emoji's in usernames, ban program names in usernames, do fancy regex to filter comments..
The ones that actually talk like humans would be hard to pickup, sure, but so many of the obvious scam messages still include some various key phrases in their content which should be enough to make a decently accurate anti-spam system. I mean, one guy did it because TH-cam wouldn't, it'd be stupid to think a company like Google doesn't have the capability. I feel like they just setup and AI to manage youtube then left the building.
@@andriidesu2936 What you're saying is true, but the fact is they aren't even trying. Many of the scams use the *exact same language* every single time. The crypto 'investment advisor' scams are even worse, they unroll an entire preprogrammed conversation with the same *conversation* every single time, right down to the misplaced punctuation or word strangely left by itself on its own line. There's simply no effort being made.
Technically, not quite character for character identical because they do change the contact name and number... but nothing else is changed. On the bright side, the complete failure to police the scammers and let them just use the exact same script every time does make the scripts even more obvious, if that helps anything. I guess it means people are less likely to get scammed twice by the same scheme.
"Getting scammed took longer than expected" is the best answer ever to a survey.
Imagine that poor peon at Paypal whose job it is to read those. He/she is sitting there going 🤔🤔🤔🤔
“Frown”
😂
Will be a really bad PMP 🤣
Great to see you keep informing the community of these scams, rather than simply giving up on it and let it run its course like many other TH-camrs do these days.
Let me explain actually, there is logic behind making scam look... this way. Same thing as Nigerian Prince emails, i's all about getting anyone more suspicious/etc away early, so they don't waste time on you, and only people who they think are easier to convince are going to fall for it, so scammers waste less time.
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED lmao just kidding
It's embarrassing that anybody falls for them in the first place. These people vote!
@@agentoranj5858 The ability to spot deception, and strong logic/reasoning skills, surprising aren't one in the same. Some of the most gullible and trusting people I know are also some of the most intelligent. And a democracy that gates off people based on the strength of their vote would go to shit real quick. Our systems might be inefficient but the fact we're living in luxury (comparatively) and aren't tearing are heads off in revolution, means it's the best system we ever had.
Financial Darwinism lmao
kinda same as cults, where they quickly filter out the more reasonable people (which is the vast/dominant majority) out at the earlier intro phases
only leaving the ones truly gullible deeper into their scam scheme
It's absolutely disgraceful that TH-cam doesn't do anything to combat this plague
They have. You can block users, you can block comments with keywords, you can completely disable comments, etc etc
Matter of fact the reason you can’t use external links in TH-cam comments is an effort to block scammers.
Does it work? Of course not. Criminals work around systems and laws put in place to stop them…it’s what makes them criminals.
Like with the external links being blocked you and I now have to pay for the crimes of others.
Saying it’s disgraceful that the bank got robbed because it didn’t have better security is naive at best. There is absolutely nothing TH-cam can do to stop crime, criminals will always find a way just like they already have.
They made sure to remove the dislikes though! An actual useful feature! TH-cam as a company is the worst.
@@katsudon2048 One of the stupidest replies to someone who is complaining about issues in a platform, is telling them to just leave
You mean mandatory IQ test during account creation?
Those scammers are at every channels, even some small channels got that. It’s too much to the point where I’m tired of TH-cam’s no meaningful actions.
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
The people going out and exposing scammers and locking up their time are really doing the Lord’s work.
These guys almost got me. The channel I was watching did have a giveaway running at the time which made it all that more believable. I did locate a genuine business email address for the channel in question and emailed for confirmation when they started asking for money for my free pc and it went no further.
Same thing happened to me. I felt stupid for even replying in the first place but at least I had enough sense to stop before It got to sending $$.
Don't take it too hard, most people have enough to think about during their day, work, family, bills etc. Sometimes maybe you're too tired to figure out what's going on. It's a shame that youtube does literally nothing to stop this from going on.
But the takeaway here is that as soon as you were asked for money you knew it was a scam. That’s the point. It may not be immediately obvious when you receive a communication that something is a scam as it depends on the sophistication of the scammer (thankfully most of them can barely spell or construct proper sentences), but you can always be sure it’s a scam as soon as they ask for money, so you used your common sense and therefore didn’t get scammed.
I almost fell for a scam once. And looking back it was incredibly embarrassing. But you're right, it was because I was in such a moment of desperation. I wanted to believe something had gone right.
There's so much going on today it is easy to make a mistake. You really have to be cynical to survive. Being that way can be tiresome though. We all like to think things are better than they actually are.
@@1pcfred You also have to remember that people used to have fewer interactions with strangers than before the internet or even telephone/telegrams. You might get scammed by rando salesmen or something, but you'd generally know who to trust in your usual daily life. Now, 1,000 scammers can contact you in an hour or places 1,000 scam calls or post 1,000 scam comments on a TH-cam video. They all have access to you all the time now.
@@sovereign1160 well yeah. Basically anyone asking for money on the Internet is more than likely a scammer. Unless you asked for something from them first, that is. But if it is an unsolicited demand/ask for cash then it's most likely some kind of a scam. Everyone needs money I suppose. Some just don't care how they get it.
@@1pcfred Being cynical is the logical way to be, naive people get eaten alive by this world.
@@andrewzych4591 there are advantages to being a pessimist. Most of the time you're happy you're right and occasionally you're pleasantly surprised.
There's a saying in Russian - suckers are no mammoths, they won't go extinct. Scammers are well aware of that. Thanks for going out of your way to raise awareness!
What does that have to do
@@jamesbissonette Z
In English we have: there's a sucker born every minute.
You're right. The Russian people pretty much lives by this.
When they're not eating propaganda raw they're refusing to take responsibility for their government. As long as you call yourself a democracy the Russian is directly responsible for its government's actions.
Well, there's a saying in Hindi- Scammers will exist until people are idiot enough to fall for it
Steve learning how to spell "telogram" is the most epic character growth in the history of cinema.
Whether you've won a giveaway or are just buying something from someone online, never ever use Friends and Family on PayPal. You cannot get a refund through Friends and Family. There is no buyer protection. It's literally meant just for trusted friends and family. It is a scammer's best friend, because everyone naturally assumes with PayPal you have that protection, but you don't unless it's Goods and Services. Also Cashapp has absolutely no refund option. Nor do most other services they use.
Yup, I've seen too many people get scammed on Facebook groups by paying Friends and Family.
yup. these days, those people are getting too sneaky. they even managed to sms me saying i have a package delivering to my place when i never placed an order during those weeks. i clicked on the link and saw they want to charge me 20 cents for it to be delivered but guess what, they have an option to fill in your full name and credit card details and i immediately backed out and realise the sender was from “INFO”. Apparently, they have been doing since last year.
"Friends and family" is the biggest red flag people should look for
Except, PayPal _did_ give Steve his money back.
@@bluephreakr The size of GN might have something to do with that.
I really would like to see an interview (probably with the victim being anonymous) where someone explains how they fell for these scams.
Because the amount of bots and way they spam just makes it confusing to me that, at least when it comes to the scams in TH-cam, anyone can fall for it.
It's simple, some people really are just dumb.
Now sometimes it's medical or something but a lot of the time it's just not everyone is smart enough to catch onto things being a scam.
Nothing you can do about it aside from edcuate your family and friends so they don't fall for it and report the scam comments/accounts.
Atomic Shrimp has a similar basically exactly as you describe
There are A LOT of naive people out there
I've had dozens of people (who appealed their ban.. out of hundreds of banned) on discord who got their discord hacked through a scam. When asking them it's either they don't tell, or they say they were stupid, yes lots of stupid around.
But basically no one wants to show exactly what happened, haven't found one yet
@@DedmenMiller The best advice is two fold:
1. If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
2. If it at all feels abnormal/odd/off it's a scam.
There are many times I can tell something is a scam without being able to figure out exactly how it's a scam..
Report, block, move on
I fell for a scam when I was 13, Keep your kids away from the credit card and keep your elderly people informed.
Steve, the kind of guy that will test everything, even scams. LOL. 😅
6/10 not realistic enough, could have scammed 8% more people
... and no scammers were dissassembled in the process ... quite disapointing.
I like how he gave them a well deserved bad review, two hours would be an outrageous amount of time to waste on a legitimate purchase, let alone a scam.. Pro scammers could have drained the life savings of six little old ladies in that amount of time, these guys suck at scamming.
I almost can't believe that youtube hasn't done anything about this. Too bad they're too busy licking the toes of corporations that are slightly inconvenienced by dislikes on free online content...
I really wish youtube would do more to stop the scammers
TH-cam won't it drives comment metrics up even if their from scam bots
Ahh the old Twitter metric huh?
TH-cam would stop them in an instant if it was costing them money. Unfortunately these scammers are making yt money
@@CannedMarmalade exactly... Massively helps engagement metrics.
Scams are just a stupid people tax, if you fall for a youtube comment scam, that's Survival of the Fittest 2022 edition.
Thank you for the pinned comment explaining that the money didn't go to them.
This was very very painful to watch, even if intentional, I hate to see anyone get scammed, but knowing it "failed" for the scammers is good though.
A much better followup would be GN trolling GN scammers and make them make a fool of themselves, very much like the "New Oregon" state example.
it is possible the got the money and just have a negative balance in their paypal...ive had someone dispute something.. they got refunded immediately and my paypal went into the negatives and i ended up owing paypal until i won the dispute. im not sure how paypal works in other with social security numbers and such.. but its totally possible they still walked away with money unfortunately.
Thank you for raising awareness about this. People ARE being scammed and I HOPE this sort of video will prevent some from falling for this in the future.
"Can you get me a discount because you are famous?" - hilarious! On a serious note, thanks for this video. Hopefully lots of people see it and learn about this stuff.
Man I can’t even win a pc through scam comments lol. I always wondered the amount of work required to get scammed this way and am happy to know I would have given up much earlier in the process
Linus Sebastian was going over the scam comments and he was like ah, I'm too lazy to be comment scammed. Although, he did get scammed by someone who had infiltrated one of his contractors.
Hey congrats you win a free PC just send me $5900 and it'll arrive tomorrow
Yeah, scamming is now becoming a huge issue than it was ever before. I am so glad that you're speaking out on this.
A lot of the fault, for the multiplication of scammers, bots and other online germs, lies with the users, rather than the admins, because they've stopped being pro-active and washing their hands :)
This happened to me recently actually. An animation channel I watch uploaded a video about a free Adobe AE crack...
And I fell for it.
It didn't match their usual content at all, which are usually Flip-A-Clip animations, but the more I tried to analyze it, the more I just wanted to try it and see if it worked. I wanted better software than the stuff I'm still using, even though I've gotten really good at using it with all it's quirks.
But my TH-cam account(s) also got hacked, and started posting similar videos. I changed my passwords, turned on 2FA, and cleared any devices I didn't use. I'm still trying to get my other channel back after it got banned for the content.
I later found a Trojan and a Trojan Bitcoin miner in easy to access areas, and deleted them manually. Because I know Windows Protection won't do garb when it comes to finding that stuff.
But yeah, I felt really stupid when it didn't work, other than the split second command prompt that popped up, showing that the virus was installing itself. :)
Don't be stupid. I always had this feeling that I'd never fall for something like this, and I did. Now I know to keep stuff locked up tight, even if it takes a couple more seconds to sign into stuff.
The irony is I got hit up by one of the clowns the other day and wasted like an hour of his time. Amazing you made a video about it two days later, Thanks for making people aware of the scam.. though I feel bad people really need this sort of warning. One is born every minute they say.
Good on you for wasting the scammer's time!
We need as many people as possible to waste those scammers time.
@@DrakkarCalethiel My scammer was more active and at least tried to pretend to be the youtuber in question. So I wasted an hour of his time, but this guy wasted over 2HR of GN time. I hate scammers so much.. Scambaiter is an amazing view into how scammers work.
@@GamersNexus wasting their time is worth the sacrifice.
Unless you used a bot, you also wasted an hour of _your_ time.
the ones claiming to be "scammed" are scammers also. they'll whine and cry in front of the content creators in an off chance that the creators feel pity and reimburse them.
this true for the most of them
it's scammers all the way down
Never thought of it that way. I hadn't considered that angle till now. Thanks for mentioning it.
the real scammers were the people that get scammed... bro you're so smart, bro. good thing i am the most smartest person alive (just like you, bro) and i will NEVER fall for any scam. because that's you know, what not smart people do. and we're the smartest, bro. bro you are so correct. we're all about that no scam life, bro. dude that's so true....
oh and also you should rewatch 4:30 like once or thrice
could be, also could be that you are just over-paranoid. Sure everyone and everything is a scammer ey... there are no victims from scammers you claim ? LMAO.
The surprise and depressing frustration in Steve's voice was delicious. I don't think he had realized how much effort it takes to get scammed by one of these people, or how obvious the scams are. No address? Come on people. Be smarter with your money!
Some people do get less reasonable when they see a good deal and they will go out of their way trying to believe it's true
I think it's more often intentional than not. Only the really stupid/easy marks ignore those obvious red flags. Less time wasted on ppl who at some point recognize what's going on.
These scams are classic and have been around for ages. I remember a long long time ago seeing letters that would come home saying that You just won something, but need to pay for processing or shipping. Now these scams are preying on people and succeeding because of the reach of the internet.
Thanks for helping spread awareness and knowledge on the subject. Watched my brother get scammed out of money for a car earlier this year, did everything I could after that to educate my family on how to identify scams but there are too many different ways they come at you. My mom got hit a month later. We need to figure out how to protect those that can't see through the smoke screen.
This stuff is running rampant. Seeing this on many channels. Every time I see them it makes me sad, because they work. They wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't producing results.
but do you also report them to youtube if you encounter them ? Not that it will change anything i'm sure, i even suspect it is done by some youtube employees who can abuse their positions in the company to do this.
The slow pace of the scammer is either due to having a lot of fish on the line or to get someone into the sunk cost fallacy with regards to time invested
cheers for not shaming ppl for falling for scams and instead focusing on the real problem: the scammers
I would've sent them 5 bucks, then just use the browser dev tools to edit the $159.09 in before taking the screenshot. If they question just say the remainder got lost on the way to New Oregon
bro thats actually galaxy brain stuff right there
Ha, I was thinking they should have just photoshopped it, but yeah, that's even easier and way faster
I've seen a scambaiter send a payment of 200 Nigerian naira instead of $200. A naira is worth about one fourth of a penny.
It's easy for people who are tech literate to totally dismiss these guys very easily but the main issue at hand is that for every tech literate person out there, there's THOUSANDS who aren't well versed in this kind of stuff.
Scams like this hurt real people and in some cases it could ruin their lives, especially when they target the elderly. It's cruel and incorrigible and I hope to god TH-cam does something because I'm sick of it.
I can't imagine the hardship big TH-camrs have to go through when they get message after message from people saying the big TH-camr scammed them.
One doesn't have to be "tech literate" to grasp that there's no such thing as a free lunch, especially in YT comments.
@@virtuallifeform A problem is that legitimate giveaways do sometimes happen, so if you know about that you might just think you're one of those lucky people. Obviously legitimate giveaways don't happen in comments but you can't expect most people to know that unless they've seen this scam before.
@@zea_64 "You can't expect most people to know that", that's certainly true - but I would hope they'd have a SINGLE MOTE of common sense and wise up.
Can't expect people to use common sense, I suppose that's also true.
@@SmogginMog i've read (in this comment section) everything from, the people are not smart, to not tech literate, to greedy and a bunch in between. I'll just point to the lotto. People are not making it like they used to. This influences decisions more than you think.
These people have the right to vote...that's the scarier part
Well done for GN actually acknowledging this is an issue. It's a shame TH-cam won't put more strict filtering in place.
I did almost fall for the first of these I encountered (was thrilled that my favourite content creator was "interacting" with me), but could not verify the address, so looked it up on line and discovered it's yet another online scam. I can't even go one day without someone trying to scam me these days....
I felt the same when it happened to me just the other day. It wasn't so much about the giveaway (and this TH-camr does do giveaways occassionally, so I thought it was a special Christmas thing) than about her chatting with me. There were some red flags, but I ignored them for a moment. Then they became too many (the UPS account I was asked to contact for the shipping had spelling mistakes and wanted my photo (what for?!), the way she chatted with me was somewhat impersonal, and it was unlikely she would give away such an expensive gift). But, yes, for a moment I was just excited I got the chance to chat with her.
Oh this gonna be good... let me grab the popcorn.
I love furious Steve.
Agreed!
You should make a limited edition "I got scammed" shirt or something like that, and then when you advertise it at the start of your videos, it'll subconsciously remind people not to fall for these scams!
don't Kitboga already have that? Don't want to infringe ;)
"I got scammed and all i got was this lousy t-shirt"
@@coladict lmfaooooooooo
I'd say GN would be better a "Don't Get Scammed" LOL
The shirts will be free but shipping is $159.09
Thank you Steve for slowing down for a minute for the bit about showing empathy to those who are getting scammed.
Also, nice background music ;)
I think it's nice too! We could all not care because "stupid people deserve it" but I don't agree. Ignorant people need education. Not shame.
He did it for money he doesn’t care he called his viewers stupid with this video
@@andrew6239 Because it's fucking common sense. If you seriously fall for a very fake looking account, that's your own fault and problem. "He did it for money" Is that why he spent his own hard earned money on a scam for a video that shouldn't need to be made?
@@IamJay02 that’s what I’m saying!! He made this video cause he thinks his viewers are stupid enough to fall for this even tho it’s common sense!
@@andrew6239 Bruh which side are you on
Sadly Steve, the people that fall for these scams are so gullible that no amount of warning will stop them. Most Normal people see these things and know it's a scam a mile away. That's also why people that are scammed once will usually be scammed many times. Appreciate the content.
I'm sure some of these "scammed" people are the actual scammers too, trying to get you to give them money for the pity or public image. I refuse to believe every single person who claims they fall for this incredibly obvious scam are real.
It's possible but I think it is too labor intensive and too low profit for the usual scammer.
@@yaldabaoth2 Scammers will go to extreme lengths for the smallest gain financially if they have invested a lot of time into a scam. If there is any kind of profit to be made they will do it.
yeah they are scambots as well
@@yaldabaoth2 it's all done by bots either way
@@marcogenovesi8570 Only to a point, eventually an actual person has to try reeling the big fish in.
As someone working with Information Security for nearly a decade, I feel for the victims. It's easy to paint them being stupid, somewhat greedy to not realize when something's too good to be true.
When people fall for scams, they feel embarrassed because people infer their stupidity and naivety from this. In this age, social engineering topics like phishing, spoofing, prepending are much larger threat to an average person than things like data leak or malwares.
However, there is a simple enough cure for this, just be aware and do your due diligence/care.
And like Steve said at the start of the video, we all just expect this to be obvious. Nobody warns about these things anymore.
Also we have to remember that some folks are from different countries and have grown up in very different environments from us. Maybe common PC and internet knowledge is not so common for them. Maybe that particular person spent all their childhood on a farm and know everything about how to work tractors and animals but don't know much about scammers on the internet? We don't know and we shouldn't judge without knowing what happened.
@@baverfjant To be honest I grew up in a place where I got to smell cow manure every day. Trust me, it isn't about where you grow up, it is about how you grew up, and about your hard coded willingness to accept things that are too good to be true because maybe this time it is.
Honestly, all the farmers I know are pretty hard core, jaded, "what's that something is free? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" types. It is actually a very serious, very by the numbers, work your ass off avoid risk as much as possible sort of lifestyle.
Nah, theyre stupid. theres so much smarter ways of scamming that still should be obvious but at least theres thought put into it
TL:DR dont be stupid
I fell for a scam once, not on TH-cam. Cost me about 2k usd. Would have never thought I'd fall for one. I believe it prayed on my agreeable nature.
kek
What where they selling you on that was 2k?
@@bik3r230 a mail order bride
Everyone has a pitch they'll fall for, be it a scam or a cult or an abusive relationship. There's never any shame in 'falling for' something. All you can do after is take note of what it was, and find ways to guard against falling for it and others like it in the future.
What matters is that you learned, but can also share to help another potential victim avoid a scam.
Good on you for doing this. It's not just your channel these scammers haunt. They are everywhere on TH-cam. The more people are aware of this stuff the lower the hit rate these scammers can achieve.
Imagine if they sent him a $2000 pc
ha! "That, uh, wasn't what we expected"
@@GamersNexus *Brand new Alienware Aurora shows up to the office* 🙃
And also, the shipping address is from New Oregon
That would be hilarious if one of the PC companies just did that pretending to be the scammer.
An artesian build PC shows up tomorrow, hilarious.
Steve's endless compassion when talking about consumers, and in this case, viewers who get scammed, is one of the reasons I keep coming back to this channel.
ya, I definitely feel the conflict in him between "This is the scammers taking advantage of people's hopes and dreams, we shouldn't blame the victims" but also "I can't believe our viewers are this dumb, I thought our audience was above average"
@@fusi0ncatalyst191 And that is a human thing to do. We all live in our little bubbles and it is hard to correct yourself all the time. But we should all try!
The fact you spent REAL MONEY just to prove to us viewers that they are in fact a scam is just on another level of commitment.
Thank you again for the continued educational and entertaining contet GN!
Also bought the limited shirt as soon as it was announced. Can't wait to receive it!!!
Thanks so much for the support! And happy to spend it for something like this. We've seen enough viewers fall for it and hopefully this stops anymore from falling prey to the scams.
@@GamersNexus Don't pat yourself on the back for this. You either fed a shark a bucket of human blood and gave it a taste - or you kept it healthy for a little while longer.
@@SmogginMog They got it back from PayPal. ;) No one got paid anything.
@@LethalBacon479 PayPal paid him back but the scammer still got the money i think
What hurts the most is thinking about how my parents and grand parents use TH-cam, if people who are tech savvy like me can fall for this , they could fall victim to this as well , share and warn others as well
I will just use restrictions or just alternatives for them to help them.
You could fall for this seriously?
@@Rafaelinux I’m not saying I can , I’m saying people who watch this channel clearly fall for this , people who know tech so I can see my father falling for this as well
You are neither tech savvy, nor have common sense.
@@Rafaelinux I think most people have blinds spots. I've never fallen for a scam like that but I've been screwed over in other ways.
This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism we subscribe for!
GN, you do give away stuff, and I've totally fallen for it. You give away the best reviews and PC knowledge anyone could ask for. My PC's have been scammed out of short, hot, suffocating existences.
Oh dear.
Hahaha this actually made my day, thanks for that lil spin on that.
Thank you! This is so important. One could just have their guards down for a second on some scams, others get people who are generally unexperienced, and some will just be as naive and they're shamelessly exploited. I felt a little pain when you gave them the money but if it keeps only one person from getting scammed it was totally worth it.
i lost my house, car, wife, job, car and dog all due to a scammer. I now live under a bridge with other victims of scammers
I am glad you guys have WiFi under that bridge. I know the exact bridge you are talking about I'll buy you guys pizza next time I pass by it
That scammer was a good one. Took your car twice. And what are you all going to do when they scam you off that bridge...?
PLEASE DON'T GET SCAMMED PEOPLE! We should all push this to the scambaiting community. Jim Browning, Trilogy Media, Scammer Payback, Kitboga collabs would be great for TH-cam in general. Educate yourselves and others especially older people and have fun listening to scammers rage cuz they've had their time wasted!
Don't forget scambaiter and atomic shrimp (when he does it)
I think a lot of scammer busters are scams themselves.
@@1pcfred how so? As in they're faked?
@@Kholaslittlespot1 that's how it appears. I've watched some of them and they all seem way too convenient to me. It looks like scripted entertainment.
@@1pcfred I can see that for a few of larger channels that run low on content but for some of the smaller guys I'm pretty certain a lot of them are legit. Especially Atomic Shrimp, who just does it occasionally as a sideline.
TH-cam: sees anything claiming is offensive but is not and purely entertaining. *removed*
Also TH-cam: sees report after report about the scam bots. *pretends they're not there*
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
Either that or they scare off people from incorporating Nazi iconography or other sensitive matters even if they were used in a scholarly context, fearing that it's some fascist propaganda when it is NOT.
No wonder why reactionaries came up with equally vile platforms such as BitChute and Parler.
The fact the scammer comments they looked up were still there after a month is pretty sad.
@@zengrath nice and lazy copy paste
@@eskimo4130 At this point he's more annoying than the spambots.
even with this, people will still fall for it.
Would be funny if the scammer actually went out and bought one and shipped it to him.
TH-cam cares more about how their advertisers are doing, over the creators on their platform. Good job, Susan.
About time you talk about this! I've won so many times, I knew it was too good to be true. 😂😂😂
We've been talking about it for like 2 years now, just not in this way.
@@GamersNexus Yes. You have warned many times. Not your guys fault at all. This is YT not caring.
@@GamersNexus you should talk to @thiojoe . He wrote a program for content creator to get rid of scammers bots.
Steve getting that discount, big brain move
I remember the convincing scam where the scammer uses the name tag of the email to say its from amazon while hiding the long fake email address. Probably the better phishing I've seen outside of targeted phishing. The name tag is really convient, but holy cow if people weren't checking the actual address.
Tricks like that were new in 1995.
How is anyone falling for things like that 25 years later???
The best one I ever saw was a word for word duplicate with the same colors of my normal remote login page for a part time job I had. Everything was perfectly normal until it said my password was wrong and I needed to change it. Then it pops up a box for social security number to verify your identity. That one almost got me!
I love the scams I get for things I'm not even involved with. Your Facebook account has been hacked! That's nice. I don't even have a Facebook account. I probably get those a few times a month.
I call this scam, the "Ambassador giveaway"
I don't know if we're good enough for that scam. Lol!
AND THERE'S THE REWOOL!
I don't think "please support us so we can voluntarily lose money to scammers" is the best sales pitch
But I'm here for it either way my guy!
He did say he was going to dispute the transfer though...
Worked pretty good. Id been considering the shirt for awhile. And finally said fuck it and ordered it while watching this lol
@@andersjjensen Best of luck
When you send money to "friends and family" on PayPal, you basically wave them of any responsibility to get you your money back
@@Redslayer86 GN merch are always bangers
I love my shirts and coasters
GN posted in another comment thread that they did end up getting the money back
I almost fell for such a scam,very fortunate I got sceptical soon enough.But Im still feeling a bit stupid,that I didnt identify it immediatly.But anyway,better feeling dumb but learn a lesson than feeling smart to ignore it,but later fall for a better disguised scam...
The scams have infiltrated youtubes ads, did we expect them to actually bother with comments, especially after everything else that has happened within the last... what, like 10 years?
TH-cam ads have always been scams from the beginning.
@@DctrGizmo True, but now aways it's either hour long videos to waste your time, or "Check out this simple device that has completely destroyed the multimillion dollar *blank* industry"
Even as someone from Argentina... That "New Oregon" was just too much, LOL! Anyway... So glad I'm so poor that I can't even get scammed! :-D
"I can only pay in Argentine Pesos" Scammer: "Um, don't bother. Take care bye"
Yup, I work in IT and I see people of ALL ages get scammed from even the most obvious of scams. Sometimes these are even young CEOs or CFOs of start ups that have their own IT departments! These scammers are very creative and always adapting to modern trends you really have to be careful out there.
do you wear collar in your job
Young CEOs and 'entrepreneurs' are probably one of the most gullible and greedy groups of people on Earth, of course they fall for scams. I have a personal policy to never trust a man wearing a suit it has served me well, in my experience people who dress very smartly usually have something to hide unless they are ex police or military.
@@realcartoongirl what
Thankfully, most scams people are likely to encounter are obvious and made by people who don't even know how to spell properly, let alone use proper grammar.
Think about it: There's no way a legitimate company would hire someone with these deficiencies, as well as a complete lack of professionalism to be the "communicator/sales" representative.
@@GENKI_INU the thing is that's actually on purpose more often than not. Think of it as a weird gate keeping. By ruling out people who notice the mistakes they spend less effort on their catches.
I just love it when Steve gets angry. It's all so genuine and passionate, very relatable. 🤣🤣
The most outrageous part of this is TH-cam basically allowing it to continue. It's absolutely within their power to stop this, and shouldn't even be that difficult. It seems like they just don't care that criminal scum are ripping off their customers with relative impunity.
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
TH-cam considers these scam messages as "engagement", it's sad...
@@zengrath Convincing criminals not to commit crime is surprisingly harder than you think. It's not as simple as asking a scammer to "please stop scamming". Removing their platform, stopping their income, is the best way to remedy it. Who has the power to do that? Ding ding ding! TH-cam.
@@zengrath Yeah, people shouldn't be falling for it, but TH-cam should also be taking reasonable steps to prevent it. One doesn't need to exclude the other.
If I run a bar, I can't completely stop hustlers ripping off my customers. Once I know about a hustler, however, I can throw them out, ban them, and keep an eye open for it happening again.
@@AtomixKingg You got it completely backwards and putting words in my mouth that i never said, it's people like you that's the problem. I'm not telling criminals to stop, i'm telling you people to stop. You people are the problem, not TH-cam, not the scammers, you. If you stop giving scammers money, if you stop funding the scammers, they would stop. The ONLY thing that will put an end to scammers if for scammers to lose their funding, for them to lose their funding you people need to stop giving them money. I'm absolutely completely angry at this point at people who blame youtube or blame government or blame scammers. No matter what TH-cam does, scammers will exist as long as you people give them the money. It's same issue with gold sellers in MMO's, you would think 20 years of gold sellers in MMO's that people would figure out finally that it's not the game developers that can put an end to it, it's the fucking people who can put an end to it by not buying gold from 3rd party gold sellers running sweat shops full of little kids in 3rd would countries. Stop blaming other people and take fucking responsibility for your own action. Stop and do fucking research before you send your money to anyone. Fucking stop already. Your making things worst for everyone.
In general I don't think you can help the majority of the type of people who fall for these scams. They're predisposed to it for whatever variety of reasons. Specially if they're not a child or elderly. Great video though, really interesting. And yeah it can happen to anyone, ie Jim browning but that's not a typical scenario. Stay alert friends ⚠️
I don't sign up for contests anyway so when I get the "You've won" I know it is a scam.
The people falling for such scams are the same people that open links to websites in scam mails they are receiving at work and are putting in their login data on said websites. Having to send money to random accounts, especially when you supposedly "won" something, should be a big red flag.
Working in IT for a large university, we get scam / phishing mails all the time and I'm glad that the people I'm responsible for are great at picking out scams and are also informing me, when they received some, so I can send out a warning and forward the mails to our central IT security which can get scam sites taken down. But I also heard from colleagues that they send out fake scam mails to test their employees and 60% (out of hundreds) fell for them...
Also: Ask first, not only after you send money or put your login data into some website!
PS: Seems that the same scam is also targeting viewers of other channels. Just saw that I got two of these scam messages at Retro Game Corps four days ago and just reported them. Very similar text. But why does TH-cam not offer "Scam" as an option as normal spam isn't as severe?
I feel like, at this point, creators should be filing class actions left and right against the platform. The amount of neglect which is hurting their creators and platform is too damn high!
Class action against the platform they are using? Good way to get banned from the private company and lose your income.
🤡
@@svenabend360 A properly organized protest will shake yt to the core. They can't ban 100 big people and if they do, damage will triple, especially when this is YTs fault in the first place.
Would be real nice if people stopped giving these scammers money. I don't blame TH-cam, everyone blames the company or government for things like this, ,when issue is the people, not the platform. It's same situation with gold sellers in video games, everyone wants to blame game publisher and tell them to enforce banning people and tracking these people down more that fall for gold selling crap, people who ruin game for everyone else and economy and encourage significant amounts of spam in global chats and all. It's not the game publisher's fault, it's the freaking people who keep doing it, and when i would argue with people about it, these people always like I can do whatever i want with my money so fuck you for telling me what to do. It's same thing with these scammers, they keep on doing it because people keep giving them money. There is 0 excuse for falling for these scams anymore, how many more times do people have to be reminded not to fall for them to stop it already. Why in the hell is Gamer's Nexus's audience falling for it? If this audience falls for it, there is no hope for any channel's audience. I've gone from frustrated to now completely angry at these people who fall for scams. It's not TH-cam's fault, no matter how much TH-cam tries to fight it and tries to make it harder for the scammers, they will still exist. It's the peoples fault! It's almost always the peoples fault no matter how much they want to try and put blame on someone else like the big company or the government.
yo I like your pfp, you got taste.
PLEASE SCAM ME!!! A bot has never messaged me before
I always like the goofy fun content in between releases.
It's genuinely baffled me, in fact more so worried me for years how people fall for such blatant stuff. The mass use of phones has made things massively worse as people are silently (In a lot of cases) flipped from one site to another without knowing (Or knowing how to tell) where they are....
I was once part of a large survey regards online safety, and the Gen X'ers were by far the most well versed as far as safety online.
These days there are people using PC's and they don't know the absolute basics which is half the problem.
Many don't even know how to tell what 'website' they're on, the difference between files and folders, the simple things such as hovering over links and seeing the main domain that it leads to. Etc etc.
There needs to be much more education in school and whatnot about browsing the web/being online, too much of it is focussed on crap programs that many will likely never use anyway.
Basic cybersecurity really is something that the vast majority of people are completely clueless about, that combined with the fact that most people are not encouraged to be critical thinkers.
My statement to those that do fall for shoddily crafted scams is: "Well, that is unfortunate. Hopefully you will treat this as a lesson and try to learn something from this. The price of that lesson is what you lost to the scam." It is quite depressing that enough people keep falling for such things, that scamming is a thriving industry. Scammers are making enough money off of these poorly constructed scams to have entire teams and offices of scammer staff, not only that, but they pay their staff enough for them to live very comfortably.
Unfortunately, the majority of these terribly crafted scams are not originating from actors that live in the United States or the UK, or from any other country that has relatively robust law enforcement action against such criminal activities, so holding the scammers accountable would normally be only a dream.
@@TH-camTookMyNickname.WhyNot Hah yeah I had a similar experience with a doctor's bill I didn't know I had from the hospital. I got a phone call from some named organization that was apparently a collection agency. They asked me who I was and then asked for proof of who I was by giving my birthdate and some information... I deadass said to them "How do I know who you are to give you my information? Tell me the month it starts with so I know this isn't a scam." The guy goes "I can't give you the personal information" and I said, "Then you're a scam, bye."
I got a letter from them like 3 days later lmao.
Our schools, movies, tv shows, all encourage us to not think critically
This has nothing to do with cybersecurity :P
@@xcava86x As someone who spends too much time on cybersecurity domains and research, I agree
Steve's dedication to his audience has reached new heights. To knowingly scam himself and pay real money to scam himself. Scamception? lol
He scammed his scam so he can scam while scamming
“It is harder to convince someone that they have been scammed, than it is to scam them in the first place.” -Asmongold
I fucking hate Asmonfuck but he's right about this, for SURE.
Asmon is the modern times wise monk.
Got a FB friend praising plug in electricity savers that claim to lower your electricity bill. By just plugging the device in.
The Big Clive and Electroboom links may have been on their post but it was meant for others who may have been misled.
Thanks for doing something about this. Every TH-cam channel is aware of this, but most just tolerate it. Even TH-cam themselves don't seem to be doing anything about it.
When I see these, I report the comment, also open the offending channel in a new tab where I go to the about page and report the channel for impersonation, and paste a link to the channel they're impersonating.
My favorite about these scams is the idiots who fall for it and then think the person the scammers were impersonating some how owe the scammed person restitution. Just when you think people can't get any more stupid, they up the ante.
What if that was their play all along. Create account pretending to be scammed by fake TH-cam account, message TH-camr. TH-camr takes pity on them or get scammed to prove a point
Hi Steve. Love this video. I consider myself to be very tech savvy, been using pcs for over 30 years since I was a child. I fell for a scam last year. It doesn't matter how much you know or how experienced you are, you can still fall for them. You could be tired or just have a brain fart and fall for it. I will happily tell everyone I fell for a scam to show that it can happen to literally anyone. Some of these scams are becoming pretty advanced these days.
Love it, might not have been in the production schedule, but fun and informative content regardless ❤️
I don't think I would have paid him just to make the point. Good scambaiting strings them along into increasingly proposterous situations until the scammer gives up. Rewarding him with $150 just keeps them going that much longer.
We got it back from PayPal so he didn't get anything.
@@GamersNexus awesome