Online Scams: Money Thieves, Mind Thieves, and Cyber Robbers

A few days ago, I became curious about what was behind a particular Facebook ad. It wasn't that I actually thought Gil Schwed had switched careers from information security to stock recommendations, but I was genuinely curious about what was really happening. From that moment on, I fell down a rabbit hole of scams, or more accurately, scam attempts that the algorithm, in its benevolence, threw at me one after another after identifying me as a potential victim. Online scams and scams in general are a fascinating topic to me. A combination of technology and psychology. As far back as I can remember, I've been interested in the manipulations that are done to us to make us do something that isn't necessarily in our best interest.

We are only at the beginning of the AI revolution, which, like anything good, also brings with it bad things. In this article, I want to talk about some ways they will try to take your money and how you can protect yourself from it. There will be no stories about Nigerian princes here. Unfortunately, we are far beyond that stage. Take a peek at the video I made from various attempts and see how Haim Peres, Guy Rolnik, Yossi Vardi, Gil Shwed, Amir Yaron, the Governor of the Bank of Israel, and many other good people tried to get me into a group where they would recommend stocks. I emphasize that the people in whose names the things were published have no connection to them and, along with those who fell for these ads, are their victims. Note that the text in the ads differs slightly in each ad and is tailored to the person in whose name it was supposedly published.

Types of thermos

Despite the goal of every scam being to transfer our money to someone else, I think it would be fair to divide scams into those based on intellectual theft versus actual theft.

Plagiarism

"Geniuvat da'at" (roughly translated as "intellectual theft" or "brainwashing") is, for example, offering me to be "represented" by a team of statisticians who will fill out the lottery for me and increase my chances of winning. Of course, it's impossible to increase the chances of winning the lottery beyond increasing the number of tickets purchased. There are no "strong" numbers. Nevertheless, companies that offer precisely this exist. Want a few minutes of escapism? This video can provide it:

The "Arale is calling" commercial is also a form of cognitive theft that uses a mental bias. It causes us to think that if an event that occurred is easy to remember (a stranger won the lottery), it means our chances of such an event happening to us are higher. This bias is used on the positive side (if there is a positive side to gambling) when talking about "hundreds of winners a year," or on the negative side when an insurance agent tells how just last week someone discovered they were ill and how lucky they were to have insurance. I do not recommend giving up on insurance that suits you, but whether someone else had an insurance event has zero bearing on whether You are Need Insurance This.

A common type of plagiarism is a course Technical analysis for predicting whether stocks will rise or fall. According to this method, developed in Japan in the 18th century (1700-1800), it is possible to identify the future price of rice by identifying that the price changes over a period resemble the shape of a Japanese candle. It is not that the method does not allow Sometimes Stock price prediction. Any method, including reading coffee grounds, astrology, and any other method, will be permitted Sometimes Predicting future stock price increases or decreases. A method is not measured by its occasional success in making correct predictions. When there are two options: up or down, even flipping a coin will often enable a prediction or, more accurately, a guess of the trend. Technical analysis has not shown preference over astrology in any study as a way to determine the future price of any asset. It is also easy to explain why this method or similar methods cannot To make such a useful prediction for an investor like you and like me. Suppose someone discovered a method to identify trends well. If they keep this information to themselves, they might strike gold and their fortune will grow significantly. Well done. But if one relies on a method whose details are known to everyone, and when we know that most stock trading is done automatically by computers, it is clear that if a computer identifies a trend, it will perform the action within a hundredth of a second, long before we finish typing a username and password to log in and make the purchase. We will receive the price after the change that our "candle" showed.

As humans, we want to believe that there is order to things and that if we just learn enough and gather enough information, we will recognize this order and be able to use it for our benefit. In the past, religion filled this role. Although we understood almost nothing, we were told what to do to make things right. Of course, in those cases it didn't work (life expectancy was around 40 years), but we always thought that if we tried a little harder, it would eventually work. Today, we know much more about the world, but it is still difficult for people to accept that there are many things, like the economy, that have so many variables that it's impossible, no matter how much data, computing power, or intellectual effort we invest, to know what will happen to stock X in 3 days.

I know that when I write, you can't tell it's a disappointing message. I apologize for that. It's not by chance that messages like this are much less common in communication compared to messages like "What's the forecast for this market that predicted the crash in year X." I too can repeat every week that in 2026 and then 2027 and then 2028 there will be a stock market crash, a war, a pandemic, or anything else. As long as it's not something completely far-fetched, there's a chance that one day I'll be right and be the one who "predicted the...". Don't be those who listen to such nonsense. Look for people who often say "I don't know"; they are usually the ones to trust. "Train your tongue to say "I don't know".", Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot. And in addition to my own, don't listen to those who never say "I don't know.".

Another type of intellectual theft I've encountered many times is phone calls or online ads that start with the sentence "Following the Treasury's reform" or "Hurry before the Treasury's reform." These advertisements and sales attempts are mainly in the insurance field, and if you try to inquire about which reform is being discussed or when it actually occurred, you will discover that even the representative does not know. This is usually a generic phrase to justify the call or give a false sense of urgency to the advertisement.

"Soft" thefts"

The series of Facebook ads I posted above is a form of fraud—one I’d call a mild case. They lure us into joining some WhatsApp group where they supposedly recommend stocks, but in reality, there’s likely to be some kind of malicious link or a demand that we’ll receive a recommendation in a moment—but first, install an app that costs only 10$, etc. In my opinion, this is a mild form of theft because it’s easy to avoid using the awareness I’m trying to raise in this article. Sometimes the scam begins with a seemingly innocent approach via Messenger or WhatsApp, and a conversation ensues that gradually makes it harder and harder to tell that it’s being conducted by a bot. For now, broken Hebrew can help us spot a bot. That will change. But our ability to recognize an implausible offer remains. A bot once suggested I install its investment app and that it would arrange a meal for me with its friend Elon Musk. When I jokingly expressed skepticism, it asked for my phone number and told me to wait for Musk to contact me. 'Musk" did indeed contact me. In Hebrew 🙂

Blatant theft

Imagine the following scenario. The whole family is sitting shiva for their father who has passed away. A friendly woman calls the elderly, grieving mother and says she’s from Yedioth Ahronoth and, unfortunately, there was a mistake in the credit card charge for the obituary—the VAT wasn’t included. "Could you give me your card details so I can charge the missing 47 shekels?' The caller knows all the details (she has the obituary in front of her, so she knows the children’s names, the home address, etc.). 99% I assume most people would give out their card number, and of course that’s the thieves’ goal, not the small charge. A dear friend’s mother, to whom this happened, did the unthinkable and asked them to call her son.

Always when someone Calling you Do yourself a favor and ask for his phone number so you can call him back. You can also search for his phone number on Google before calling.

Another story. A man used to wait in his family doctor's waiting room. When he saw elderly people walking home, he would follow them. From then on, knowing where elderly people lived, he would check their mailboxes. For you, perhaps, the bank sends messages by email, but many elderly people continue to receive messages by regular mail. When the man saw a letter from the bank, he took it. Now he had the bank account number, recent transactions, and often even the name of the bank teller who handled the account. All that was left for him to do was to call the person and say something along the lines of: "Hello, this is [name/department] from Bank X. Anat, who usually handles your account, is unable to speak with you right now, but she asked me to verify a few details with you." In this way, he would obtain more details from the person, which would later allow him to withdraw money from their account.

Summary

The best way to avoid getting into a fight or falling victim to some scam or another is to count to ten (or to a hundred) before making a decision. Except in cases where you've called me for a quote on consulting services, an excellent response to any offer is "I'll consult with my husband/wife." When you tell someone else about an offer, you often realize its limitations on your own. Even if you don't, that other person hears the offer's details without the mind-bending tricks and can therefore help you make a decision.

Request to speak by phone or receive an email from whomever initiates a call to you. Do not go to "free" meetings, and do not allow anyone to come to your home for a "free meeting." Your time is worth a lot. Someone who insists on not speaking by phone/Zoom but wants to meet usually wants to influence you in non-substantive ways. The grandeur of someone's offices says nothing about the quality of the offer they are making to you.