- Jun 24, 2016
- 636
A BBB study bursts the myth of the duped little old lady
BBB Institute, the educational foundation of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, just surveyed 2,021 adults, asking whether they’d lost money to a scam in the previous year. Roughly 30 percent of those age 25 to 34 were scam victims, while less than 10 percent of those 55 and older were.
Stereotypes of Scam Victims Are Wrong
“We’ve bought into the stereotypes about scam victims — they’re usually seen as vulnerable and elderly, or gullible and poorly educated,” said Emma Fletcher, product manager with BBB Institute. “These stereotypes are strongly held…and they are wrong.”
Fletcher wrote the paper the survey appeared in: Cracking the Invulnerability Illusion: Stereotypes, Optimism Bias, and the Way Forward for Marketplace Scam Education. “We are all at risk, but younger and more educated individuals are actually the most likely to be scammed,” said Fletcher.
How can that be?
According to Fletcher and co-author Rubens Pessanha, it’s because older people don’t suffer as much from what’s known as “optimism bias.” In plain English, optimism bias means thinking that other people are more vulnerable than we are.
Who People Think Are Scam Victims
Survey respondents were asked to name the type of person most likely to be associated with being the victim of a scam. Their answer: she is “less educated, less intelligent, elderly, lower income, and less financially secure.”
What’s more, of the respondents younger than 35 surveyed, 80 percent said people older than 65 were more likely to be scam victims. Similarly, 71 percent of students said retired people were more likely to be scammed.
In reality, Pessanha said, “seniors may be the one group that does not suffer from optimism bias when it comes to scams. They’ve heard, loud and clear, that they are at risk.”
Why Older People May Be More Savvy Than Younger Ones
And get this: Pessnaha believes older people may be more savvy about scams than younger ones. That’s because they’re less likely to be impulse buyers than younger consumers and less likely to make purchases online, where many scams happen.
BBB says the new research confirms trends it has seen in BBB Scam Tracker. That’s a crowdsourcing tool, where more than 30,000 consumers have reported scam details to BBB. With Scam Tracker, 89 percent of those age 65 and older said they recognized the scam in time; just 11 percent reported losing money. But more than three times as many of those age 18 to 24 failed to recognize the scam in advance; 34 percent said they lost money.
All this time, boomers have been focusing on protecting their parents and themselves against scams. But it looks like we need to work harder keeping our Millennial kids safe.
How to Keep Your Grown Kids From Becoming Scam Victims
BBB has two recommendations I think you should pass on to your grown kids:
First, if you’re victimized, report what happened and warn others. “Targets of scams feel empowered when they can take back some control” doing so, the report said. Quoting the report further: “The voices and stories of others have the potential to normalize the problem in a positive way, shedding the shame and stigma of victimization with the message that, if it can happen to other people like me, it can happen to me.”
Second, know the latest scams and the methods crooks are using to fleece people. Survey participants who were victimized said prior knowledge of the scams and scam methods might have prevented them from being taken.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE TOP 10 SCAMS OF 2015
