And my guess would be a fraction of those warned would phone the scammers back to find another way to pay them. Some folks can't bear to know they've been tricked.
I mean, there are cases of victims being directly told by store employees that they can't sell the cards because it's a scam, and them getting right back on the phone with the scammer and going to another store instead.
Ugh, you gave me PTSD from my prior life as a retail manager. No one ever believes it's a scam! If the person wasn't a complete dick I would often call the cops over (the station was literally right behind our store). The cops almost always got through to them, I honestly think some people only didn't get scammed because they thought they would get in trouble with the police for doing so.
No sir, your grandson isn't in jail. And even if he were, no jail takes Google Play cards as bail payment...
I finally caught what all this reminds me of - the Expanse and that hivemind.
I wonder whether popularization of what they call "AI" is a result of some consistent strategy by big entities - having such paranoid thoughts lately. If people in charge there are generally ignorant in information theory (and also haven't read Lem), they may really think that something like Eros will somehow emerge on its own.
Which it won't, of course, but the heavy usage of this abbreviation ("AI"), if I went on with my paranoia, may too be a result of some common belief that it will.
If we think about Theranos' investors, elites are really full of people who believe that some Star Wars level sh*t will just emerge on its own and they are the smart kind who'll control it.
What about if the aliens are already here and they are mind-controlling the world's elite to get rid of humankind and repopulate the planet with their own population or do genetic gathering from humans to improve their own population genes?
Paranoia goes 1000% level.
Edit: Don't tell this to some fanatic MAGAs or they could do some crazy shit.
The reason you don't hear them telling that to you is that for them it's an obvious known fact. Old news. We've all seen They Live, X-Files and Stargate SG-1, those famous documentaries.
Pretty sure staff at places that handle Western Union payments are already trained to warn people when they try to send money for similar reasons, and I've read that plenty of people just refuse to believe it and act like the lady working the desk at Walmart is trying to keep them from getting the big payout the nice prince from Nigeria is going to give them.
I’ve triggered scam locks on remittance apps before also, and they were very pushy in informing me that I may be being scammed (I wasn’t, but I honestly didn’t mind too much) when I called to clear them.
