Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by herenorthere 2426 days ago
Probably not the norm, but I have worked alongside a tech company that has 30+ million user accounts, and as such, has a pretty much constant stream of scammers wishing to take advantage of our user base.

The customer support dept. has a phone number to call, which is listed on the website. But you'd be amazed how many people are willing to call some random number so long as it shows up in a google result. Normally, it's older folks that fall for this type of scam.

The fraud dept. sends a handful of take-down requests to google per week; but it really doesn't do much to stem the incoming flow of support hotline scams. Once a number is taken down, they just create a new website and new fake number.

To reply to your comment more directly, I have no idea whether or not this scam type accounts for a significant portion of scams overall, but for my particular industry it sure is. In any account, the way people are scammed on our site changes all the time depending on what's available/easiest for the scammers, so the methods they use are constantly changing/adapting.