Online scams work better on 18-34 year olds than on 50 year olds

We all know darons and daronnes who feverishly call their children to find out whether or not they should click on a link received by email from a bank telling them to enter their bank IDs to win €100,000. One might think that generations born long before the Internet are particularly susceptible to online scams.. However, the 16-34 age group is said to be the most likely to fall into scammer groups, according to a study by the Local Government Association in the UK.

Young people between 16 and 34 make up more than half of those defrauded in the UK

This association of British local authorities emphasizes the following:

” People aged 16-34 are more likely to be scammed and account for more than half of scams suffered in the UK.

Studies show that one in five people aged 16-34 have been scammed in recent years, compared to only 4% of people aged 55 and over. »

Another report, released by Visa and Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL) and noted by the Financial Timesjust confirmed the trend: one in four young people aged 18-34 in the UK trust fraudulent messages. This makes them almost twice as likely to be scammed as people aged 55 and over. As noted Stunned by the way, 23% of young people also would not pay attention to spelling and grammatical errors that could betray a fraudulent message.

Increasingly sophisticated online scams, with identity theft on networks

So obviously, many young people know that they have no interest in clicking on links sent by strangers via email. But scammers resort to much less crude techniques such as impersonating a family member, tax or postal authorities. According to Lloyds Bank, this type ofimpersonation scam has increased by 155% in the last 12 months via instagram.

Indeed, online scams are becoming more and more sophisticated: we can collect basic personal information from person X such as their name, email address and phone number, even their Instagram identifiers, in order toto defraud person Y by usurping X’s identity to make him let his guard down.

In case of online scam, this handy sheet published by the Ministry of Economy can help you. But since prevention is always better than cure, consider activating the double authentication to connect to your Instagram, Twitter and business accounts. And if a loved one asks you for money by private message on a social network, by email, SMS, Whatsapp or other, have the reflex to call him to make sure it’s not a well-crafted scam.

Front page photo credit: pexels-nataliya-vaitkevich-7172791

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