Hi, I’m Auntie Scam.
My story
When my dad’s identity was stolen a few years ago via social engineering, I became obsessed with scammers and started learning about the pure evil of their tactics.
Since then, I watched helplessly from the sidelines as we clicked and scrolled into the golden age of scamming. The scam industry’s estimated global size is now $70-100 billion, which rivals that of the global illicit drug trade.
Criminals figured out that taking advantage of people who live in high-trust communities is an infinite money glitch. And they’re all in.
You are not protected
Because our large institutions are slow to respond, we are currently in a Wild West period where scammers can steal a retired person’s life savings — and somehow it’s the victim’s fault.
New consumer protection legislation has been introduced in a handful of countries — but it’s not enough. All it takes is one click on the wrong Google sponsored ad, one bank employee who approves your suspicious withdrawal, one trip to a crypto machine you don’t understand.
One mistake and everything you worked so hard for is gone.
It’s unlikely that you’ll get your money back because the onus is on you to protect yourself from scammers, who are often linked to transnational organized crime groups.
Information is our best weapon
The situation is obviously unfair, but it’s unclear how to proceed in the short term. While our institutions work in the background to improve our systems, the only tool to fill the gap in the interim is information.
The mainstream media are so far behind when it comes to scams, we can’t rely on traditional reportage. There is lots of great scam info on the internet, but it’s mostly in places where older people don’t hang out.
So I created this site in the hope that I can make a small contribution. Think of me as a carrier pigeon moving messages between generations. I’m just one person, but I’ll do everything I can.
These days I spend every waking moment filtering through gigantic piles of internet trash and extracting the best info on scams. My goal is to bring you all the latest scam news and show you what to watch out for, keeping everything on this site, so you’re not out there in the wilds of the internet, clicking with wanton abandon.
I’m not an academic or a technical expert. I see myself as more of a fledgling detective. I spend my days piecing together how scams work so, over time, each distinct scam fragment combines to form a mental image. When you can see the big picture of scamming, it becomes part of your world view.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that scams have patterns. Knowing all the little details is less important than pattern recognition.
Once you understand the “mosaic of scamming” your knowledge protects you. Then, if you encounter a new piece of tile, it’s less likely to cut you when you pick it up. Even if you’ve never seen a specific shard before, you’ll intuitively understand how it fits into the bigger picture. That’s my goal.
Join me
So that’s a summary of my journey so far. I hope you’ll join me as I continue to explore. It won’t always be uplifting, but it will be interesting. I’ll do my best to explain things simply because I’m learning too.
So let’s pour some tea, open our notebooks to a fresh page and start our investigation. I’m excited to be here with you.
Love Auntie Scam