Almost 1 in 10 Brits Affected By Scams

[engine]

Almost 1 in 10 Brits Affected By Scams [news.bbc.co.uk]

Almost 10% of adults - more than 4m people - in Britain say they have responded to a scam in their lives, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said.

Almost a half of those who did respond to a scam had lost more than £50, while 5% lost more than £5,000.

The OFT said 73% of adults had received a scam e-mail in the past year.

Some 6,500 people are also receiving letters from the authorities warning them that their names are on a "sucker list" being circulated by fraudsters.

That's a huge number falling for these scams. Isn't it time this sort of thing was tought to kids at schools, so they can go and educate their parents about how not to be scammed.

[willybfriendly]

If the saying, "You can't con an honest person," is true, then what does that say about the Brits?;)

In all seriousness though, there is a certain mindset that makes people vulnerable to these schemes. It is not just the old "too good to be true" adage, there is an attitude of entitlement that allows people to be led down the garden path.

I find I have little tolerance for the scammers or the scammees...

[LifeinAsia]

Isn't it time this sort of thing was tought to kids at schools, so they can go and educate their parents about how not to be scammed.

More likely the little buggers will use what they learn to scam their parents! :)

[sonjay]

The OFT said 73% of adults had received a scam e-mail in the past year.

So.... that means that 27% of adults in Britain don't have email?

[piatkow]

So.... that means that 27% of adults in Britain don't have email?

Sounds like a reasonable figure. My mother and her sister don't own computers, her sister in law does. Of three cousins, one has email at home, one only at work and one not at all.

[Syzygy]

The claim of '1 in 10' (or 4 million people) sounds rather dubious. Closer inspection of the OFT website shows that:

...5,718 people were surveyed online by YouGov in January 2010.

Source: [oft.gov.uk...]

Scaling up results from such small samples and presenting them as a reflection of society as a whole is a very bad practice! Tut, tut.

[piatkow]

Damn, I didn't get that YouGov survey. They pay 50p a go to participants.

[grandpa]

such small samples

It almost sounds like the OFT report is a scam.

Educating people is difficult. When a person finds their name on a check containing lots of zeros, that individual can become very hard to persuade.