The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do::The generation that grew up with the internet isn’t invulnerable to becoming the victim of online hackers and scammers.

  • @[email protected]English
    92•9 months ago

    Gen Z Americans were three times more likely to get caught up in an online scam than boomers were (16 percent and 5 percent, respectively).

    Does this control for the fact that Gen Z are simply online a lot more than Boomers?

    I can’t tell what these are percentages of. 16% of scammed people were GenZ? 16% of GenZ have experienced a scam? Because both of those would be skewed if, for example, 100% of GenZ use the internet daily and 20% of Boomers have never used it.

    Once again, a journalist doesn’t know how to present statistics in a meaningful way. They do this 72%!

    • TheWoozy
      English
      21•9 months ago

      I think it has more to do with age and experience than generational labels. Kis who “were just born yesterday” or “are still wet behind the ears” have always been, and always will be gullible. Everyone needs to be fooled a few times before they “wise up”. We need to stop all generational finger pointing and bigotry.

      • @[email protected]English
        8•9 months ago

        My kid and his friends were convinced they would get $100 of free stuff from Temu, but only if they got 10 people to download the app. I tried telling them it was bullshit marketing but since they “heard so and so got $100 then it will work.”. I downloaded it just to get them to shut up and deleted it.

        Temu. Fucking Temu? It’s the dollar store wish.com and that’s saying something.

        Anyways, it obviously didn’t work and haven’t heard about Temu since, then I’m pretty sure they realize their mistake.

        • @[email protected]English
          6•9 months ago

          Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do

          Temu is legitimately malware. The company had their source dumped and they obfuscated their malware-like practices to avoid Google’s automatic detection. I presume they did the same with their iOS client. It is very telling that they have been extremely successful despite the same exact company and team doing this before with another app, Pinduoduo. That’s right; same dev team and everything. Temu goes above and beyond the normal surveillance capitalism stuff we are used to and circumvents system security in order to sell your raw data on the market. The entire scheme isn’t to build a retail space (although it is doing that as well); it is to get as many people to download the app so they can steal an absurd amount of data which is normally protected.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•9 months ago

            Pinduoduo is the parent company of Temu. Of course it’s going to be the same dev team.

            This is like saying you’re surprised Instagram shares code and engineers with Facebook.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•9 months ago

          Referral codes aren’t exactly uncommon for new apps, especially if VC money is involved.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•9 months ago

        Amen. I remember in high school and my early 20, I was gullible af.

        It’s an age issue. Not a generational one.