Greentext

Its like anything else, you hide the bad and sell people on the good. Or if there is no good you talk as little as possible. Could they guess its a scam job beforehand? Probably, but they have to see an opportunity through and by the time they know for sure they are comfortable in their job.

People are acting like America has no scam companies. They are literally in every city, I almost worked for one when I was younger. MLMs are the most common example people would know about.

Most of that greentext is bullshit. The truth is that some people will always try to make a quick buck, even at the expense of others.

Kind of reminds me of a story my brother told of some country in Africa. He was friendly with some kids on the street and showed them how to set up an email address. So one day they came excitedly up to him and told him that they met someone and that they would be rich. Of course he immediately clocked the familiar scam.

He explained the whole situation by telling them that the internet was like the street. Don't trust anyone. That was an analogy they got pretty quickly.

I think multiple generations need to pass before the population has any immunity to this sort of thing.

Unfortunately the scams will continue to develop in sophistication also.

Education and economic opportunity aren't really genetically moderated. Unless you mean it's going to take multiple generations' time strictly because it may take decades to improve upon those because such infrastructure and policy has a lot of resistance from the ruling class.

Aren't the shown phone numbers spoofed?

Before cell phones, phones were opportunities. Calls could be anything. Maybe you won something or a politician is cold calling constituents or something. Maybe someone got your number from a friend and is calling for the first time.

Its just very old habits that are hard to kill. Younger folks see random calls as almost certain scams. Text messages or emails with links get deleted immediately. Theres essentially a 0% chance a random call or text is actually beneficial to me.

I always answer unknown numbers.

I don't get scam calls or marketing calls. I've had a marketing ban on this number and it has never been listed and it's about 25 years old or so. Like maybe once or twice I put it somewhere and got calls offering gym memberships for a while but that was a single place and I told them I have a marketing ban on my number so they stopped. It genuinely works to a very reasonable degree here in Finland. It's not perfect but nothing is.

So when an unknown caller calls me it's usually a doctor or some such thing I actually do need to reply to. During the daytime. At night it's the police or fellow criminals.

I have way too many things I need to answer that I don't know the number of, and/or get mislabeled by the phone company, to do that, or trust "scam likely".

My primary care physician's office is scam likely My neurosurgeon's office is scam likely My neurologist's office is scam likely

I have a feeling the phone company, or whoever they get those labels from, might just be putting any number for a business name, linked to an Indian name, as "scam likely". They don't get my Orthopedic surgeon's office wrong, or my nephrologist's, or my endocrinologist's, or my podiatrist's and those are ones with European names. Everyone else, scam likely, even ones I didn't list here, everyone else are doctors from India/Indian decent.

I also get a lot of calls from government phones, and other private businesses, that just show "unknown", or a number I don't recognize, but are important for me to answer. I don't know these numbers ahead of time, because they don't know who is going to call me back when these contacts are arraigned.

I answer most calls but rarely get them. When it's a scam, it's usually the "play a recording and only use a real person if they push 1 at the end of it to talk to a real person" type. I'll either hang up quickly or if I'm feeling bored and trollish I'll hit 1 and pick apart their plot holes (like if they say there's a warrant or my package is being held, why the fuck do they need to ask for my name?). Then they get frustrated that I pushed the button when I clearly know it's a scam and hang up. I think the reason it's rare that I get those calls is because they also put me on a "waste of time, don't call" list or something like that.

I setup an IVR on my parents landline and a whitelist to bypass it if they're on the 'contact list'. Doesnt stop manual callers, but it stops all the automated calls.

Still fun to troll them

"I sympathize with the thief while he steals my bike"