You’re likely not as immune to scams as you think – here’s why

What do Tiger Woods, Ben Stiller, Australian pensioners and dating app users have in common? Despite being from different walks of life, they have all fallen prey to various scams.

In 2024, more than A$2.03 billion was lost to scams in Australia across 494,732 reported cases. Most of these scams were enabled by technology, with scammers contacting their victims either online or on the phone. However, about 600 of these scams happened in person.

All of us are vulnerable to being scammed – it’s rooted in who we are as human beings. If you think you’re immune, you are not. Police officers fall for scams. Even cyber security professionals fall for scams. So what hope is there for the rest of us?

What does help is to understand the underlying techniques online scammers rely on, so that you can better spot them. These psychological tactics are similar to those used in offline scams, street cons and social engineering in general. But they’re also reminiscent of techniques used in advertising, marketing and any other industry where the goal is to persuade you.

Unmasking the influence principles

The goal of a scammer is to try and influence you to part with your money or other valuable possessions. They rely on classic persuasion and influence principles that take advantage of our psychology and other aspects in our lives.

The reason we pay attention to scammers in the first place is because they rely on the need and greed principle, promising us something we need or desire. In romance scams, that’s love. In investment scams, that’s money. It could also be a job or status.

Scammers may use the authority principle, such as pretending to be your boss and requesting you to transfer money, a scam known as business email compromise.

Or they may use the kindness principle to get you to donate to some bogus humanitarian cause in what are known as fake charity scams.

The principle underlying some of the most costly scams in Australia, such as impersonation, romance, and payment redirection scams is the distraction principle. This relies on us missing the scammers’ “sleight of hand” and clues as to their real intentions.

We are all social animals and believe in safety in numbers. Scammers know this and will use the herd or social proof principle to convince us that we are missing out on those hard-to-get concert tickets, for example.

An insidious form of a foot-in-the-door technique relies on the dishonesty principle. In this case, the scammers might entice you to install a VPN (which happens to be malware) to bypass your organisations’ firewalls or to provide use of your bank account for some international money transfer in money mule scams.

American psychologist Robert Cialdini has noted many of these principles are what salespeople use to get you into buying something you didn’t really want. They are also the principles that politicians, friends and family use to get you to agree to their requests. In other words, they’re not always a sign that you’re being scammed.

To identify a scam, ask yourself these three simple questions:

• what is the intent?
• who benefits?
• do I have a free, informed choice?

Rushing to pay for a holiday booking because the countdown timer indicates you have two minutes left relies on the same scarcity principle as when you transfer your savings into a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. The former is a legitimate transaction, while the latter is an investment scam in which you lose.

Ultimately, the core problem is that every day, we are constantly exposed to such nudges – in the media, online, and in our daily interactions. Over time, it can become difficult to recognise when these nudges are used for negative ends (called “sludges”), and in scams.

This is why anyone can be scammed

Anything that makes us human can be exploited to influence us. Our perception, emotions, relationships, thinking and beliefs can be used to influence our behaviours.

All personality types are susceptible to persuasion, although their “Achilles’ heel” may vary. For example, people who are agreeable (cooperative, kind, compassionate) are generally found to be more susceptible to persuasion, which may make them more susceptible to scammers.

While not everyone will fall for common or generic scams, any of us can fall for a targeted and well-executed one. Demographics play a role in whom scammers choose to target to increase their success rates.

In Australia in 2024, elderly people were commonly targeted in investment and romance scams, while mothers lost thousands to “Hi Mum” scams where someone posing as a family member asks for money. Young people fell prey to threat-based scams. Men tended to lose money in investment scams, while women were more vulnerable to romance scams.

Don’t be too confident

Importantly, overconfidence in our scam savviness can work against us. When we have high trust in our abilities, we tend to assess situations as less risky, taking mental shortcuts in decision-making. Such mental shortcuts can cause us to miss critical cues and red flags.

Different sectors in Australia are working together to warn us all about scams. The “Stop. Check. Protect” approach recommended by Scamwatch also provides very helpful tips to better protect yourself.

Remember today could be the day you get scammed. Prepare accordingly and stay vigilant.