Have You Ever Fallen For a Scam?

[Stadler]

I've been quite the skeptic most of my life.  I guess I was taught that anything that sounds too good to be true probably is.

This is me. I'm much more likely to miss out on a good deal than I am to fall for a scam.

The fascinating thing to me is how we distinguish a scam. It honestly seems to come down to how we feel about the people on either side, because in essence capitalism itself is a scam. We're all trying to get other people to give us their money, whether we provide them something or not. Is ticket scalping a scam? Howzabout a dealership charging $400 to Scotchguard your seats? If I offer terrible financing to sell you new siding for your house, is it a scam, or is it only so if I sell it to your elderly folks?

This has long been a point of interest for me. We seem to embrace caveat emptor as a society, but only up to a point. Gods only know where that point actually lies, because it seems to move about a lot. Normal middle aged white guy gets fleeced by the financing gal at the local dealer "well, he should have read the fine print." People who got foreclosed on after buying too much house for too little down get all the blame, as opposed to the people who offered them these deals knowing exactly what would happen. We only feel bad for these people if we know them or have reason to empathize with them.

Interestingly, two people here described "scams" they almost wound up working in. Amway is kind of scummy, but is it really a scam? And selling encyclopedias door to door has been a thing since Gutenberg. In both cases you're actually selling somebody something, albeit at a ridiculously inflated price. That's not a scam. It's capitalism.

Honestly, this is America. We embrace scamming people.

Hard to argue with any of that, really.  I mean, I sort of disagree with the "capitalism is a scam", but I get where that's coming from.  The basis isn't wrong.

[chknptpie]

I got "taken" just out of high school by the gym memberships that aren't allowed any more. When I got home after FINANCING a loan for the gym membership, my mother took me right back and made them cancel it lol

[Metro]

I got an email from someone saying that they had a video of me, er…”being master of my domain”, if you catch my drift. They said they also had the passwords to all my social media accounts and were gonna post the video if I didn’t pay $1,000.
I freaked out for a second before remembering: I don’t use social media.
I didn’t respond and deleted the message. It’s been a year since then and nothing ever happened. My domain remains private.

[Adami]

I got an email from someone saying that they had a video of me, er…”being master of my domain”, if you catch my drift. They said they also had the passwords to all my social media accounts and were gonna post the video if I didn’t pay $1,000.
I freaked out for a second before remembering: I don’t use social media.
I didn’t respond and deleted the message. It’s been a year since then and nothing ever happened. My domain remains private.

I got a similar email a few years back. Realized that even if they were recording me doing my thing, on the rare occasion I used my computer (I live in the 21st century and stream it from my phone to my tv
) that the image of me master debating would be really boring and not super graphic. So I didn’t care.

[Stadler]

I've gotten that one too; I love the language and syntax of the one I got.  Making it out that the porn sites I visit were so egregious that my very existence was in jeopardy.   My revelation wasn't that my activities would be boring, but that compared to the threats, my tastes are shockingly vanilla in this day and age.  But then, that sort of made me consider... should I pay?  Do I want people to know that it only takes a moderately firm buttocks to get the skids greased, so to speak? 

[ProfessorPeart]

The first time I got one of those porn emails the message stated they captured me via my webcam. Problem was, neither my desktop or laptop at the time had a webcam. My current laptop does, but I keep the shade permanently closed on it so they lose me right there.

Also, they never refer to me by my name but by whatever is in front of the @ in the address. If you're so good, you have my name.

EDIT: I should also state there isn't anything to capture anyway. 

[El Barto]

Learn to use disposable emails, people! The world is full of sites that you want an initial confirmation email from and then never, ever want to hear from again for the rest of eternity. Ten minute burner emails are your friend. Feel free to spam me at takoci4975@svcache.com all you want, but you've only got 9 minutes and counting to do so. 

[Metro]

Yeah I learned my lesson after that and now I sign up for dirty sites under my brother-in-law’s name and email.