[mhuffman]

I have heard that theory from some cybersecurity experts online but have never seen it substantiated in any way (by interviewing some scammers, for example) and frankly don't believe it.

The misspellings and grammatical errors (used to?) continue on the fake sites that are created to steal credentials, and the excuses for most of the reasoning regarding emails do not hold there.

[1dom]

Why wouldn't you believe it? It makes economic sense. The most expensive part for a scammer in any automated scam is the part which can't be automated, where a human has to get involved for e.g. a phonecall.

Economically, the scammer wants to do everything they can to get rid of smart or diligent people who might be harder to scam at the expensive part. It feels like it would cost scammers to not have typos.

Also, anecdotal, but the rise of autocorrect, spell checking and LLMs doesn't seem to have made any impact on the quality of spelling in my spam folder over the past 20 years.

[mhuffman]

>Why wouldn't you believe it?

Lots of reasons, but here are a few:

1. The misspellings and grammar issues (used to) continue beyond emails into the websites, etc.

2. The grammar issues, magically, seem to mimic the the same grammar differences between certain countries typical language constructions and those of standard American English

3. Check your spam folder right now if you have gmail. Where did this 4-D chess triage of illiterate potential dupes go? Spelling and grammar are suddenly almost perfect! Also, many of the older scams seem to be replaced with romance or family impersonation scams.

>It makes economic sense. The most expensive part for a scammer in any automated scam is the part which can't be automated, where a human has to get involved for e.g. a phonecall.

Perhaps you haven't heard, but this can also be automated as well, cheaply. Works particularly well on the elderly!

>Economically, the scammer wants to do everything they can to get rid of smart or diligent people who might be harder to scam at the expensive part. It feels like it would cost scammers to not have typos.

I think you are giving too much credit to the spammers. Economically, the easiest thing to do is to send out endless emails and wait for responses. Those people, regardless of diligence or literacy, are already self-selecting and you can let them talk to LLMs to winnow the rest.

>Also, anecdotal, but the rise of autocorrect, spell checking and LLMs doesn't seem to have made any impact on the quality of spelling in my spam folder over the past 20 years.

I agree ... up until the rise of LLM's. Now (outside of more use of emojis) it is very good.

[1dom]

> 1. The misspellings and grammar issues (used to) continue beyond emails into the websites, etc.

Again, economically, why wouldn't they? It costs them to use perfect grammar in material by increasing the chance someone with half a braincell would get through to them.

> 2. The grammar issues, magically, seem to mimic the the same grammar differences between certain countries typical language constructions and those of standard American English

If you accept they're intentionally making mistakes for a moment, then wouldn't you expect the mistakes they intentionally make to include some of the ones they see accidentally made?

> 3. Check your spam folder right now if you have gmail. Where did this 4-D chess triage of illiterate potential dupes go?

Done. First time I did it in a while, was surprising to see how few legitimate spam e-mails are sent now (I found 3 out of about 50 "spam" old newsletter subscriptions). The ones I did find still had a bunch of obvious grammar and structural issues with it. 3 exerts:

> I am David C. Lee, Chief Inspection Agent- United Nations Inspection Unit at John F Kennedy International airport New York- , During our investigation, I discovered An abandoned shipment through a Diplomat from the United Kingdom

> Greetings I am contacting you regarding the role of ICPM (fund manager), Kindly revert back for more details.

> We are unable to verify your wallet due to some miss-match code error found during your last transaction. You are strongly required to verify your wallet to avoid limitation on your account.

Don't get me wrong, not as in-your-face spelling errors as I remember, but still enough to see that a modern spelling/grammar checker/LLM hasn't been used.

> Perhaps you haven't heard, but this can also be automated as well, cheaply. Works particularly well on the elderly!

I know this area far better than average - I was building some pretty large automated IVRs until recently. The idea that a cheap and easy voice automation works particularly well on the elderly is wrong. It's only sufficient for part of the process - any complex interaction like collecting a full set of card details or login details - it is far, far cheaper, easier, faster and more reliable when done with a human.

> Economically, the easiest thing to do is to send out endless emails and wait for responses. Those people, regardless of diligence or literacy, are already self-selecting and you can let them talk to LLMs to winnow the rest.

If it was economical for them to try get their spelling/grammar accurate, then they would use modern spelling/grammar checks, and I wouldn't have been able to trivially pull a sentence from the last 3 legitimate spam e-mails I've had.

Look, your own arguments even rely on the assumption that they're economically motivated. There's clearly and economic argument and motivation for making mistakes. There's clearly evidence mistakes are still being widely made despite the widespread availability of spelling/grammar checking. Why are you so sceptical of this?

Again, I'm not saying there's clear written confessions of this happening, but I can't see a reason for you _not_ to believe it at all given your reasoning. It just seems a bit contrarian.