To gain some insight on the topic of spam calls, we reached out to Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Pwned, a website that works hard to bring an end to data breaches and hacking. When asked why scam phone calls and messages are so common nowadays, Troy says, "Because it's a low-risk criminal activity that can be executed in bulk and have potentially high returns. Compared to more traditional criminal activities such as break and enter, cybercrime is very attractive!"

We also asked him how often people manage to fall for these scammers' tricks. "A huge number of people fall victim to these scams every single day," Troy says. "Part of the problem is the difficulty in separating scams from legitimate emails, in part because the scams do such a good job of emulating genuine communications, but also in part because so much genuine communication is indistinguishable from a scam!"

We also asked Troy how much damage these scam artists do. "At an individual level, it could be anything from a few bucks to your life savings. Increasingly, these scams are targeting corporations and the damage there is often in the millions of dollars."

"Scams are successful due to clever social engineering; we are all subject to behaving irrationally when a scam creates a sense of urgency, appeals to our curiosity or greed or makes us fearful of not responding," Troy explained. "We, the humans, remain the weakest link and that's what scammers continue to exploit."

If you'd like to learn more about Troy's website or find out if you have been "pwned", check out Have I Been Pwned right here.

We also reached out to Robert Nordlander, host of the Fraud Fighter Podcast, to hear his thoughts on the topic. When it comes to why these scams are so common, Robert told Bored Panda, "Scam artists use the technology that is available to the general public. Long time ago, it was mail, but today everyone uses email and texts. It just makes the results faster, and it is also cheaper to send emails/texts. When texts/cell phone calls were expensive, it wasn’t as prevalent."

When asked how people manage to fall victim to these crimes, Robert says, "No one will know the exact data except for the scam artists. But it must be profitable, because they continue to use it. The scam artists spoof links to take the victim to spoof webpages, so their personal information can be requested. These links or attachments allow the scam artists to determine which email address/phone number is active. So even if the victim doesn’t 'bite' on the scam, the scam artists know that there is activity whether answering the phone or opening the email. I have personally received emails that request my services (albeit suspicious story). However, I respond with ‘not interested’ comment, only to receive an email as if I was interested."

Lastly, Robert added, "According to the Annual Report by the ACFE, fraud is estimated to be 5% of total sales worldwide. If it is too good to be true, it is. Stay away from promises of anything free if you respond to a text or email. Same thing with being added to a sweepstakes to enter for a prize. Your chances of winning are very small if it is legitimate, but the chances of being scammed or receiving a computer virus is exponentially greater. If in doubt, hang up on any person claiming to be a representative calling you to request your personal information. Then call the 800 number on the financial institution’s website or call the number on the back of your bank card. If there really is a problem with your account, you can get direct help from your bank when you make the call."

If you'd like to learn more about preventing and avoiding scams from Robert, be sure to check out the Fraud Fighter Podcast right here.

Scammers have been around for generations. We like to think that we all know not to click suspicious links or fall prey to obviously sketchy messages, but obviously someone is doing it. Or these scams would not be so prevalent in the first place. According to a report from Truecaller, almost one third of all Americans admitted they had fallen prey to a phone scam during 2021. Among those who have been victims of phone scams, nearly one fifth of them had been swindled out of money more than once. 

These phone scams have been becoming increasingly more common over the years as well, as there were only 22.1 million such victims in the US in 2017 and 59.4 million in 2021. As CNBC reports, not only have these crimes increased in number but also in the amount of money that is being taken from people. In 2020, the average loss reported by phone scam victims was $351, but by 2021, that amount skyrocketed to $502 per person.  

In response to this concerning amount of scams happening in the United States, senior advisory board member at Truecaller, Clayton LiaBraaten told CNBC, “It’s very disappointing to me, and alarming that people are getting convinced to send criminals money.” But he explained that he was, unfortunately, not surprised. “These criminals are incredibly clever in the way that they manipulate people.”

When it comes to the demographics of who is more susceptible to being scammed, the most vulnerable age group was adults between 35-44 years old. Interestingly, men are also much more vulnerable than women, regardless of the age group they fall into. The Federal Communications Commission is working hard to mitigate scam calls, as they implemented requirements in the summer of 2021 for providers to provide caller ID authentication technology, but it’s not a perfect solution. Scammers are very clever at finding ways around the rules, so unfortunately, Americans are still receiving way more spam calls than they should. “They’re not going to give up,” LiaBraaten says.