Boom time for scammers
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During the Coronavirus pandemic, people have been spending more time at home, and online, than ever before. This has given online scammers a golden opportunity to find new victims. And it’s worked. We’ll hear from Danielle in Illinois, who was caught up in just such a scam and lost thousands of dollars from her savings. And she’s not the only one. Craig Jones, Director of Cyber Crime at Interpol, describes the rise they’ve seen in all types of online scams during the pandemic. But why does lockdown make us more vulnerable? Dr. Stacey Wood, professor of psychology at Scripps College in California, breaks down how different demographics are made more vulnerable in their own ways. And if you or a loved one do get targeted by a scammer, Amy Nofziger at the American Association of Retired Persons Fraud Watch Network explains what to do.
Presenter: Tamasin Ford. Producers: Clare Williamson and Frey Lindsay. (Picture credit: Vasily Pindyurin via Getty Creative)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, we're looking at the rise in cybercrime during the pandemic. |
| 0:10.7 | It was extremely patient, very nice, very cordial, and next thing you know, I'm typing in numbers and I transferred money. |
| 0:20.2 | And I go, oh my God. And then once I did it, it was like surreal. I realized, I got, oh, my God. And then once I did it, it was like |
| 0:22.5 | surreal. I realized I got scimmed. But why has a year of coronavirus made us more susceptible to these |
| 0:30.3 | scams? One is increased depression and anxiety. A second is related to social needs, |
| 0:37.4 | the need for affection. And the third is financial |
| 0:40.2 | well-being. So when we think about the pandemic, it really hit people on all three of these, |
| 0:46.1 | you know, kind of key vulnerabilities. And is it ever possible to outsmart the cyber fraudsters? |
| 0:53.0 | We find out in today's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:01.8 | A quick log into my email and let's go to my junk folder. |
| 1:14.1 | I already have five emails waiting for me there. This one from someone called Katrine looking for love asking me just to click on this link. |
| 1:22.7 | No thanks Katrine. Two here saying I've won 100 pounds. There's another one claiming, oh, I'm the lucky winner of a vacuum cleaner. |
| 1:33.5 | I'm not so sure. |
| 1:35.6 | So these may seem fairly obvious as scams, but there are many more out there that are much more sophisticated. |
| 1:49.2 | Thank you. there are many more out there that are much more sophisticated. My name is Danielle and I live in Illinois and I work for a manufacturing company and purchasing. |
| 1:55.5 | So I was getting these emails and it was telling me that somebody's trying to use your Amazon Prime credit for a phone |
| 2:05.3 | for $559. |
| 2:07.6 | You know, and I knew it was kind of a scam, but I went ahead and went online. |
| 2:11.7 | I Googled Amazon Prime thinking, oh, I'm smart. |
| 2:15.2 | I'm just going to call them and make sure everything's okay. |
| 2:18.6 | When I typed an Amazon Prime on Google, well, the whole Amazon Prime logo popped up with a phone number. |
| 2:27.4 | So I called it. I don't know. He was so good in talking to me. He was extremely patience. |
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