We managed to once again get in touch with a representative of the subreddit's moderator team and their representative agreed to have a little chat with us.
Recently, various independent creators have also been drawing everyone's attention to the world of scamming.
"I am a huge fan of Jim Browning's content, and I am actually subscribed to him on YouTube," the mod told Bored Panda. "I really appreciate his deep-dives into scams. It's also been interesting to see him branch out and collaborate with other YouTubers, like Mark Rober."
"I also am a huge fan of Kitboga's old content, and especially anything involving [his character] Edna. I may or may not have started to adopt 'how on God's green luscious flat Earth..." into my day-to-day vocabulary."
If we were to compare these people's work side by side, we would see there are multiple ways you can approach scamming.
"From a popularity standpoint, I think [Jim Browning and Kitboga] both excel in different ways. With Jim Browning, people really love his vigilante style, his ability to showcase what a scammer's device looks like, and sometimes being able to show a scammer being reported or brought to justice," the mod said. "His delivery is more serious than Kitboga's, as he's reporting on facts and information."
According to them, Jim Browning's content also provides that rush that comes from seeing someone get karma handed back to them. "You see the 'bad guy' getting what's coming to them in the end." A great example of Jim's work is his 'Spying on the Scammers' mini-series where he shows just how methodical he can be.
#7 I Used To Live In Los Angeles. I've Never Owned A House. I Get These Texts All The Time! I Have No Idea How This Scam Even Works Or What The End Game Is. But I've Started Replying In Ways That Make Me Giggle
Browning's colleague and competitor, however, has a more laid-back style. "Kitboga has a talent for making really funny and engaging content," the mod of r/Scams pointed out.
"He has a mastery of adopting different personas, holding full-blown conversations with himself, and wasting scammers' time for hours, sometimes days. He mixes in scam education with entertainment; he will break down the steps of the scam to you throughout his videos. I think both creators really speak to their audiences and provide a niche type of content that appeals to the masses!"
Major scamming trends depend on a lot of factors. For example, when the pandemic took over the world, we saw a spike in malicious phone calls. But when travel restrictions were lifted and people began going places again, scammers started stealing money from them with too-good-to-be-true vacation packages.
However, in its Consumer Protection Data Spotlight, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said 2021 was a banner year for social media scammers, with $770 million in social-media–originated fraud losses reported to the agency.
Over 95,000 people who reported losing money to social-media–related fraud represent more than 25% of all fraud loss last year, the FTC highlighted. For context, these numbers represent a stunning 18-fold increase over similar type losses reported in 2017.
"My personal opinion (as one mod out of many on this team) is that people are trusting," the moderator of r/Scams commented on these findings. "I don't think it's gullibility, per se. These scams are tricky sometimes. But, we as people want to defer to the idea that people are honest, and have our best interest at heart. We don't want to necessarily defer to the truth that some people may lie or take advantage of us. That's our nature as humans."
"With social media, you don't necessarily feel like you are in front of (or interacting with) a real person; you can't pick up on body language or tone of voice that may put you on high alert. With social media scams, it's easy to pass along an 'opportunity' to the masses. Especially to a population that is coming off of a global pandemic, and may be desperate for any type of normalcy, money, or opportunity to improve their situation," they explained.
The mod knows at least one person who was targeted by social media scams, where a company tried to make them purchase their products up-front for a "product tester campaign", and that they would be "refunded" later. So these schemes, if timed correctly, can definitely confuse people.
"I also was targeted as a small business owner quite frequently as well," the mod added. "Random companies would offer to advertise my business on their Instagram page for a fee, but in reality, they bought their followings and were just cashing in on the fees. A lot of new businesses would fall for this, thinking they were getting cheap advertising to hundreds of thousands of followers, when in reality they were paying to advertise to dead bot accounts. Social media scams come in all shapes and sizes, and they can be incredibly tricky to pinpoint."
