I never learned about modern scams in class in school, and in my life have fallen victim to at least three scams. Along with stock investing foundations, I feel as a 30M these are the two biggest lessons I had to teach myself that I didn’t learn in school. If I had the choice, I would have picked those over guitar, piano, and most other electives I had the opportunity to take. Or is teaching common sense meant to be enough to stay safe?
Reading r/scams is very enlightening about the common patterns. The details vary, but the basic concept is they get you to feel a strong emotion (fear, hope, infatuation) and then pressure you to hurry up and act before the more logical parts of your brain kick in, or before you can describe the situation to anyone else and hear that things aren’t adding up.
@helon
I remember a young man walked into my or a neighboring business owner’s shop with an empty gas can. “My mom is in our car. We ran out of gas a mile down the street. Can you loan us $10 for gas so we can get home? I promise we’ll mail you back the money.” Thing is… our businesses were located in the middle of other businesses. In all four directions. There was literally no way to get to our little strip mall without passing at least twenty other businesses.
As a 31F, I have fallen victim to 0 scams. Might be a you problem.
Olivia said:
As a 31F, I have fallen victim to 0 scams. Might be a you problem.
If you ask Google, they return a stat that says 25% of people lost money to scams last year. But sure, it’s just me. Or maybe you just don’t know how to sympathize with people who you don’t share a problem with. Which, again, education system failure I feel like.
@franklyn
As someone that currently works in schools and is witnessing the current teacher shortage and its impact on learning and teachers’ mental health, the solution to your problem is not to give teachers more responsibilities. I was snarky, my apologies.
@Olivia
Hopefully these stresses don’t lead you to take the same confrontational stance with students, as not everyone is mature enough to give level-headed responses or not take it personally. Especially kids.
@franklyn
I love students and have worked in schools with high levels of trauma. While I was far from perfect, I do pride myself in my increased self-awareness since my early years of teaching and ability to support students with challenging behaviors. It’s the adults I work with that get that snark, their fully formed prefrontal cortex deserves it.
I think you expect too much from schooling. I can just see this proposal turning into another scam to force the schools to buy more curriculums.
I would guess that falling victim to three scams would be a pretty good way to learn what you need to know. If you need a refresher, perhaps try falling for a fourth?
Travis said:
I would guess that falling victim to three scams would be a pretty good way to learn what you need to know. If you need a refresher, perhaps try falling for a fourth?
at least three scams. He’s on it.
.How did you fall victim to scams? Someone contacted you and told you that you had to transfer money into another account to protect your money? And you went ahead and did exactly what they said? Despite all the warnings that appear when you try to do that? And then sometime later, you did exactly the same thing again? And then, sometime later again, you did exactly the same thing yet again? And you say ‘at least’, so maybe there was a fourth incident, but you’re not quite sure?
@chase
You must have a very narrow understanding of the range of scams out there, to think I would be doing the exact same thing each time, or think the only scam out there is someone offering to ‘protect money’ lmao.
@franklyn
No, they’re pointing out something important, and your defensiveness is why you’re likely to fall for a fourth scam. (They gave one random example and built on that example; they weren’t saying that that’s the only scam out there.)
@dominic
They made the assumption that because I fell for multiple scams, they all had to be similar, or in his case the exact same scam. They implied that it takes someone stupid to fall for different scams.
@franklyn
No. No one is making assumptions. Their comment is littered with question marks because they’re throwing out a possibility. They never at all said nor implied stupidity. I’m addressing your suggestion that we should have coursework and explaining, ‘You had this coursework.’ I never said, ‘You lack these skills.’ Instead, I very much said, ‘You have these skills, so now you can apply them to this.’
There are some classes that talk about scams, but mostly directed to business or finance students, where they study some of the high-scale scams that are presented as business or investment models. They aren’t directed to help you avoid scams but to avoid creating scammers. You would have more luck with a critical thinking class or even a discourse analysis class.
It’s called English class.