Preventing Online Scams

Seniors are often targeted by scammers due to their trustfulness and financial stability

Broadcast Retirement Network's Jeffrey Snyder discusses how to protect yourself and your loved ones from on line scams with The DART Collective's Cynthia Stewart, PhD.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

This morning on BRN, preventing online scams. Joining me now is Dr. Cynthia Stewart. She's the executive director of the DART Collective.

Dr. Stewart, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning. Thanks for having me.

How vulnerable do you think our seniors are to scams and online fraud today?

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

Well, the numbers tell a pretty clear story. That seniors by far, like an order of magnitude, lose more money to scammers than any other, and particularly American seniors, lose more money to scammers than any other demographic in the world. But I want to take issue with your word choice there.

They're not actually more vulnerable. They are more targeted. The latest research shows that the most vulnerable generations are actually the millennials and Gen Z.

The so-called digital natives that everybody thought they would just automatically know how to work in this digital world, we haven't taught them the skills to recognize deception, whether online or in real life. And so they actually fall for scams more frequently. Seniors are targeted more because they have more to lose, because they have a lifetime of accumulated wealth.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And I will willingly accept that correction. Thank you so much for that. And let's talk about, I want to separate the digital natives, the younger generation.

We'll come back to them in a second. But let's talk about our seniors. You mentioned they have a lot of wealth.

This is, you know, we hear about the silver suit tsunami, the great wealth transfer. Where do these bad actors targeting these individuals come from? Do we have an idea?

Is it here in the States? Is it here or is it abroad?

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

Scammers are getting, I mean, the short answer is yes, both. Okay, well, you have the small time scammers who, you know, will just randomly pick people and pull off, you know, relatively small things. But scammers in the last 10, 15 years have gotten more and more organized.

And they are, you know, they have playbooks. They have scripts that they work from. They are, a lot of them are overseas and which makes it harder for U.S. law enforcement to go after them. But there are efforts to do that and working with international partners. But yeah, they have gotten very sophisticated. And I'm sorry, I'm saying I'm too much, but.

That's, no, I mean. Yeah, so a lot of them are overseas and are, you know, they do share information with each other. So once someone falls, you know, has fallen for a scam, other scammers will be informed that, hey, we've got somebody here who is susceptible.

And so then they will get hit by more and more scammers. It's really quite sad. It's individuals against, yeah, it is organized crime at this point.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, and how do we protect our seniors? What do we need to do to further inform them? Because as you said, I mean, this is organized crime.

They're adjusting tactics. You know, there's all sorts of different ways that they can scam people from sounding like somebody and using artificial intelligence, I would assume, to pictures, to having websites that look almost exactly like financial services companies.

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

Yeah, the scammers, yeah, they've gotten very, very sophisticated. And the amount of money involved in things like cryptocurrency scams is so high that, yeah, they put in, their websites probably look better than the real ones because it's worth it to them to build things that look really, you know, really shiny. The thing to do, what we've got to do is arm people with the tools to recognize and navigate scams.

And all of the information is out there. I won't pretend that we have some magic silver bullet that people haven't found before, but it's helping to remind people on a daily basis that they keep vigilant for it because the scammers look for those vulnerable moments. They will call you in the middle of the night because you're not as alert.

They know they've been practicing their techniques since, well, since forever, since humans have been human. And they've always used the latest technology since the printing press was high-tech. They know what they're doing, but there are just a few things that people can do that will help keep them safe if they remember to do it because the scammer's secret sauce is that they bypass your rational brain and get right into your emotions.

If the more you have seen things and thought about it and sort of built up that resistance and mental muscle memory, then the more likely it is that your rational brain kicks in and goes, wait a minute, I've seen this before. Maybe I better just call my grandchild to make sure that it's really them calling me in trouble and not someone pretending to be them.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

So really it's about being more vigilant as a consumer and being aware. And I would assume that takes a lot of education and awareness campaigns. And maybe that's where the effort, I know your organization does a lot around this, but that is where we need to target, create more, I wouldn't say billboards, but emails and ways to inform people, hey, here's the latest tactic.

Here's what people are doing. And I see some of this, Cynthia, from like the FBI and local authorities, but we probably need to do it at a greater scale.

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

It's, yeah, it's a yes and situation. There's everything that people are already doing. We need more of it.

And the thing that we're trying to add to the mix is using some different approaches, using mobile games as a way to just remind people that scammers are a thing in real life and that you need to be looking out for them, using ways for people, creating a safe environment for people to practice and build that mental muscle memory. The other thing people can do that requires no special tools is talk to each other about it. Talk about what you've seen, talk about what you've heard.

Older folks need to talk to their younger relatives. Younger relatives need to talk to their older relatives. How will we confirm?

If you're in an emergency, how am I gonna know it's you? How are we gonna be sure that we're helping each other and not helping scammers? Those can be uncomfortable conversations, but once you get started, they can also be something to bond around of, okay, how are we gonna recognize each other?

It just needs to be something we demystify, destigmatize, and talk about more.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And you bring up the connectivity between younger and older generations, real important. I wanna go back to the top of our program when we were talking about the most vulnerable. Why are younger generations more vulnerable?

Is it just because they lack life experience and therefore because they lack certain life experiences, they don't know and therefore they are vulnerable?

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

So this is just, yeah, this is just my common sense speculation. The research just uncovered that they are more vulnerable. So then the follow-up research is to figure out why.

But yeah, that seems logical to me that they lack that life experience. They, because they grew up in a digital environment, they trust it. Whereas in a way, the fact that older adults didn't grow up in that, they are more skeptical than people who it's just like, air and water to them, you don't distrust it.

Whereas that sort of skepticism that older folks bring to, I don't know, new technology, I'm not sure, actually helps protect them in a small way. But because they are so disproportionately targeted, you shoot enough arrows in a direction, you're gonna hit something.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, and I mean, looking at some of these digital platforms, there's so much, you play with TikTok or you play with Twitter or excuse me, X, or you go on YouTube. I mean, there's so many people that are putting content out there. I think it's really hard for people to be skeptical and to scrutinize and say, this is good information or it's misinformation.

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

Yeah, it is difficult. And it's always been difficult that fighting your own cognitive biases, somebody says something that you want to be true, you're more likely to agree with it and not question it. And those are precisely the things that you need to question, are the ones that you automatically go, yeah, that resonates with me.

The ones that you automatically go, no, that can't be true, are less dangerous to you because you're, but again, it has this effect that we end up in our silos and the algorithms feed us what we want to see instead of being sort of balanced and we have to seek out the things that challenge our points of view and that's uncomfortable. People don't like to do it.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Absolutely. Do you think, my last question to you, because I would love to continue this conversation in another episode, but do you think this is only the beginning and we're gonna see more and more of this just because of the volume of things going on in the digital world? This is just the cusp.

Cynthia Stewart, PhD, The DART Collective

Yeah, the technology is always getting better. It's always getting cheaper. You don't need supercomputers to fake images and voices anymore.

So if it's easy, people will do it and you'll see more and more of it. The good news is that the same sort of protective behaviors will protect you. You've just, in a way, let go the idea that you're gonna be able to spot if it's fake and just know that you've got to verify everything.

No matter how much it looks or sounds like someone you know, verify it. No matter how real that website looks, verify it. Never click a link unless it's something that you were expecting, that you contacted the company and you were expecting a two-factor verification.

Otherwise, don't engage with it. If you didn't initiate it, don't engage with it. Verify it through some other source that you know is reliable.

Those few behaviors will protect you no matter how good the fakes get.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, and they are good. They're like con men and women. Cynthia, we're gonna have to leave it there.

Thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. Thanks so much. Have a great day.

And don't forget to subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Morning Pulse. Details at our website. And we're back again tomorrow with another edition of BRN.

Until then, I'm Jeff Snyder. Stay safe, keep on saving. And don't forget, roll with the Chambers.