Take this quiz to find out if you can spot what’s real and what’s fake
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This quiz is dumb af. The two that weren’t scams didn’t give you enough info to identify if they aren’t and they both just as likely to be scams? And at the end they said it was still possible for me to get scammed even though I called every single item a scam. How am i gonna get scammed if i assume they are all scams?
If you take the quiz it all you don’t get a 100%. That’s the real test.
That doesn’t make sense. Don’t trust Washington post either? Got it.
It was a joke but no, I don’t trust a news organization owned by Jeff Bezos.
Honestly, I did pretty well (except the last one which I had no way of knowing was a legitimate web site – and what the hell kind of name is that for a legitimate site anyway? But I digress…), but I would have taken steps to verify every single one of these before taking any further action. I just inherently distrust email and SMS messages.
Exactly. There was no context.
Did the person actually sign up for GeekSquad AV? They didn’t say.
Does the person actually have a Facebook account? They didn’t say.
Plus I always assume anything that references Facebook in an email is a scam.
It’s never a bad thing to be overly cautious when it comes to this stuff
How am i gonna get scammed if i assume they are all scams?
Because presumably you still interact with society as opposed to going full unibomber, and so you can’t do that.
The two that weren’t scams didn’t give you enough info to identify if they aren’t and they both just as likely to be scams?
They were
spoiler
a real bank statement and a real settlement.
It’d be weird if they weren’t something that applied to you but it’s still not a scam, and they explain how to tell.
The article and quiz talk specifically about these types of vectors for scams. If i assume they are all scams there is a zero % chance i get scanned in this way. Even on the two not a scams they talked about better alternatives to ensure their authenticity which i would have done as soon as i saw any of these “scams” its just a poorly written article that just assumes any wrong answers mean you are more likely to be scammed. I understand there is no way to 100% avoid being scams especially if you just out in the world but the answer from the article is dumb.
Edit: also the censored info made it impossible to tell if it was real.
I actually did search the second one to confirm it’s real, and the first is from a domain I know. I’ve gotten messages like the first, if I assumed they were all scams that would probably backfire.
I understand there is no way to 100% avoid being scams
That’s probably the point of this. If you ace it, it calls you paranoid and then tells you you can still get scammed.
Damn, I got the antivirus one wrong because it wasn’t clear I didn’t buy the thing in this scenario.
Yep. It relies on information not present in the example. It’s intended for most people to get wrong.
Similarly the Facebook one genuinely looks like a scam unless you know of the Facebook case.
It’s intended for most people to get wrong.
So what you’re saying is… …this article is a scam?
While yes, that’s an accurate quip, it actually does highlight a deeper issue in the industry. If everyone passes your scam test, they don’t need to buy your scam test.
Additionally, scam emails aren’t 50/50 yes/no pass/fail. It’s more a combination of red flags to gauge how risky the email is to click on links, reply to, download attachments from, etcetera.
Currently the scam testing industry has no way to rate an individuals ability other than how many scam emails they did or didn’t click on. That is a false metric. It incites scam testers to trick people to justify their value to the customer.
Still, who pays 419$ for an antivirus?
Nice try, scammer.
Psh. That last one could easily be a scam. Maybe scammers haven’t tried the fake class action settlement website angle yet, but they will, and I have no intention of being their first victim.
Half the emails in my junk inbox are ‘class action settlement’ emails, so it’s definitely an angle they’re trying (presumably with some success)
Yeah even if the last one is not a scam, it is a scam to me, even if I knew about it. I’d go and apply on the official website rather than from the email itself.
I’m not falling for that.
I just assume everything is a scam now 🫠
I didn’t click the link, it felt scammy. Did I pass?
If you clicked that link then, no, you are not smarter than a scammer.
This is not a good article
To know if an email is a scam I would check the domain of the link it’s sending, which this doesn’t provide
Also you shouldn’t trust the sender address of an email, you can spoof that
I feel like this link is a scam itself lol
This looks complicated. I will just DM you my account number, address and credit card details, ok?
I guessed things were scams that were not and I got “trusting tabby” which made no sense. How am I trusting if I thought they were scams and knew safer ways to handle those things? This article seems set up extremely poorly and without more context to some of the questions, they are impossible to answer.
So every question was a scam or not quite a scam. Sure.
This reminds me of the site to see if your email address had been pwned or not.
Well, if you looked yourself up, I’ve got some bad news for you….
