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How I Tricked a Scammer Until S/he Went Nuts

The scammer cried: “What you did so painful!?”

Mark Chu
12 min readMar 5, 2022
Scammer scream
Photo by Xia Yang on Unsplash

We all know scammers are everywhere, and if you’re not careful, they’ll steal tons of money from you and maybe more. Some claim that nearly 1.5 million new phishing sites are created each month, and more than 1.48 billion dollars are stolen in 2018. Looking at these terrifying numbers, this is definitely a serious problem.

Of course, like you and every single living human on earth, I’ve received many phishing attempts every day. This government website teaches us how to avoid scams. For example, they always either say you’ve won something, or you’re in certain danger. They also pressure you to act quickly and ask you to pay in a certain way (for example, gift cards). If you get any email or phone call telling you to act quickly or there will be consequences, do NOT panic, ask around before you do anything regretful.

Sometimes their websites or emails look very, very real. I once got an email that looked just like PayPal, for a second out of instinct I almost acted on it. But very soon I knew it was a scam. Why? For one thing, the email address was just a tiny little bit different from the real one. Yes, you have to be very careful and observant about that. Plus, the email NEVER addressed my name. If it was an “emergency,” why did you NOT…

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Mark Chu
Mark Chu

Written by Mark Chu

I’m a professor of psychology at a small university in southern New Mexico. I like playing musical instruments, basketball, and writing stories.

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