28 People Answer "What's A Famous Product That Is A Complete Scam?"

Any person is surrounded by such a huge amount of various scams that it becomes scary to stay out of trouble here. However, people tend to put themselves at risk. At least because marketing and promotion are usually done by professionals, but it's all targeted to amateurs. In other words, there are no specialized courses at any university on how, for example, to distinguish between trustworthy advertising and the kind that you should stay away from.

In search of gaining confidence, people often turn to experts - and here lies the main snag. The problem is that assessing someone's level of expertise in the modern world is also not that easy. Any person in a stylish suit, confidently broadcasting in a beautifully furnished studio, can turn out to be either a proven expert with decades of experience under the belt, or just a talented crook.

Various certificates and diplomas, which are traditionally considered signs of expertise, unfortunately, have depreciated considerably in the 21st century. These attributes may be genuine, or they may simply mislead gullible people to create the effect of trusting what the "expert" says to make a purchase or invest money.

"I think that a lot of people who are not normally gullible can get caught up in these scams because it has to do with the distortion of - the undermining of - normally good decision-making principles," says Robert Cialdini, formerly Regents' Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University, in an interview with Kendal.org. "The root cause of people falling victim to a financial fraud is their uncertainty about the details of the financial environment. When people feel uncertain about financial decisions, they look outside themselves, and this sets them up for the fraud."

As a result, the world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of confidence. This was facilitated by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased turbulence of the world community in recent years. Thus, according to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, the general level of public confidence has decreased from 53 percent in 2020 to 48 percent in 2021. We are almost sure that by the end of 2022, this indicator has decreased even more.

"Without a trusted leadership source to look to, people don't know where or who to get reliable information. The global infodemic has driven trust in all news sources to record lows with social media (35 percent) and owned media (41 percent) the least trusted; traditional media (53 percent) saw the largest drop in trust at eight points globally," the study notes.

The high-profile revelations of recent years, such as Theranos or Nikola, have also not contributed to the growth of people's trust in startups or big business. Moreover, netizens still tend to consider many things an absolute scam - just read this recent compilation post of ours, for example. In any case, we are sure that this list will be useful to you, and if any of the products or services that you do not trust are not here, please feel free to add them in the comments.