As we already reported earlier this week, in the recent weeks scammers were trying to scam people using emails, text messages and phone calls pretending they are officials with the IRS. Even the IRS in an official announcement informed the public to be aware of these kinds of scam.
But the question is, how scammers are targeting someone? Well, a recent investigation shows that scammers mostly target elderly people based on their photos posted on the social media accounts.
Recently, Indiana woman experienced a scam attempt and she decided to share her story in order to make other people aware of the problem. Athena Salisbury said she is getting a dozen of messages every week. This is what she said:
“I’d say probably at least five, at least five a week,” Salisbury said. “A lot of times I ignore them and block them and don’t even look at them.”
Scammers usually comment on how beautiful she is and use different kinds of compliments. In her case, scammers are usually asking for certain amount of money to be paid as a part of a verification process after she is offered by the scammer to be her sugar daddy.
Salisbury says she is sued to these messages and it’s easy for her to recognize a scam. She immediately blocks these profiles and preventing them to send messages ever again. However, after asking one of them why she was being targeted, she found out it had to do her with her Facebook profile picture.
“He said basically because it was an older person and older people are normally easier to con or get over on,” Salisbury said.
She changed her Facebook profile picture last year when her grandmother passed away. On the profile picture, Salisbury is together with grandmother to honor the woman who raised her.
“It made me extremely angry and made me sad, too, because there are a lot of people falling for this, giving away their life savings, liquidating their retirements,” Salisbury said.
The Better Business Bureau urge people to report every single scam attempt on their online tracker. This makes the job harder for the scammer, while the growing database keeps everyone safer since they might check if the potential scammer is in their database.
Latest data shows that younger people are more often scammed, but they are aware of scammers and in most of the cases they know how to keep themselves safe. But on the other side, older people are being scammed easier despite the fact that the number of scams in elderly people is much lower compared to young people.
Salisbury doesn’t want anyone to lose their retirement savings or what little income they might have.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” she said. “Definitely guard your money and your heart.”
Salisbury reminds everyone to be extra cautious when it comes to scams. According to her, younger ones should teach their grandmothers and grandfathers to easily recognize scammers and avoid being scammed.
