Do yourself a favor: Be crime smart

A person does not have to be stupid to be deceived, it is enough to be honest and good
Pavle Vuisić, Serbian actor

When I think about scams of any kind, including this latest generation of scams on the Internet, I remember all the situations I've been in, as well as the situations of family members, friends, colleagues, who have been scammed at some point.

And I confirm one saying:
"A man learns all his life and in the end he dies stupid".
Because what else can we do against the scams that someone is trying to trick us with, but to learn how to stand up against those scams.

And scams, especially those on the Internet, are very tricky, because they are most often directed at our worst motivation - greed.

I would ignore curiosity, naivety, ignorance, bad eyesight in the elderly, but also the purity of soul of someone who thinks that everyone is like him (good and honest, read naive), the desire to help someone, fear of loss or fear of authority, etc.
These can all be states of the person towards whom the fraud is directed, which fraudsters like to use and which I am sorry for.

And those who are deceived because of their greed?
These are those who fell for the investor's offer: "Send me one ETH, you will get two back" or those who accepted the invitation of a lawyer who writes from America, Australia or some African country, to receive an inheritance from a distant relative whom you didn't even know you had (and you don't), and for which you only need to pay $2000 for the costs of a law office and you get half a million $ or those who were chosen by some Nigerian prince who wants to send a piece of his wealth, but only need platitudes money transfer costs...

In such situations, it is inevitable that you will be left without your funds, because you will either be ashamed to tell someone that you have been defrauded, or the competent institutions will not be able to help you, because the flow of money in such frauds is very difficult to follow.

A few months ago, we had a situation at our house, when my partner wanted to buy a piece of clothing at a huge discount on the website of a renovated clothing store.
It was weird to me and I told her to be careful because it was a really big discount and it seemed too good to be true.
I wasn't near her to look at the site address in detail, but it seemed OK to her.
She forgot that she was being advised by someone who has been bypassing all kinds of scams on the Internet for years (although I have also been a victim of many scams both offline and online - but I never gave one ETH to get two, but I lost a lot of $ on some rogue projects). Fuck, I was also affected by FOMO.
And yet she decided to make the purchase, but very carefully.
She listened to me, so she made the payment from a prepaid card on which she did not have a large amount of money.
The site looked the same as the brand's site, the payment link was authentic, it led to the nmbank site to confirm the verification, to charge one cent, to confirm the card and then the purchase followed.
She selected the product, clicked confirm payment, and as soon as she didn't get the verification request, she felt weird, but by then it was too late.
All funds were taken from the card, and she never received a piece of clothing.
Since she made the payment with a Visa card, I advised her to write a complaint to the bank, they further to VISA, and to file a lawsuit against an unidentified person, for the fraud that was done to her.
After a few weeks, maybe even a month, the funds were returned to her account.
Further investigation into the fraud was continued by VISA.
Although she was a victim of fraud, she managed to recover her money, which unfortunately does not work in most cases.

galenkp asked: What penalties should internet scammers receive and why

Like all fraudsters, Internet fraudsters should be sanctioned and punished for the crimes they commit. For every damage they have caused to someone, to pay an adequate price, so that next time they will ask whether the crime (fraud) pays off...

I would treat them like I would treat any thief (as is done in some countries): If he stole something, cut off his hand, and since this guy on the Internet didn't steal with his hand, but by typing on the keyboard, cut off his finger (one finger at a time, until he's without one, for every fraud he's made).

However, internet fraudsters are very difficult to detect, find and bring to justice.
That's why all of them are not in prisons and they all have everything on their hands 🙂

There are laws and articles of law that foresee punishments (not the ones with mutilation 🙂), but catching internet fraudsters, who are very computer-educated (have enviable hacking knowledge) and who use various tools and VPNs, is almost impossible (unless some stronger organizations for big frauds are involved), so the cheated little man generally fails to recover what he lost, not to say he gave of his own free will, as compensation for something he will never get.

Is it then okay to call a fraudster a thief, when he voluntarily obtained money, cryptocurrencies, personal data or bank account data from the injured party?
It certainly is, because the fraudster used manipulation, untruth and lies in order to deceive another person.
So is it okay to call a cheated man stupid?
No way, he is just a victim of the most common social engineering hacker tools, which is very difficult to resist and recognize as a scam.

And for this reason, without waiting for someone to try to catch the internet fraudster whose victim we are, the most important thing is to try to do what I mentioned above: to learn how not to fall into the trap of internet fraudsters.
Will we succeed every time, probably not, but at least we will reduce their success rate.
You need to study constantly, follow trends and follow news in the world of scams, because just like computer viruses, scams happen until they are discovered and brought to the attention of the general public.