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by epaga·9mo ago·view on hn ↗
I’ve always wondered why spam and scam emails have been so…dumb and obvious… 99.9% of the time.

It does seem like AI may change this and if even the tech savvier ones among us are able to be duped, then I’m getting worried for people like my parents or less tech savvy friends… we may be in for a scammy next few years.

2 comments
I once read the hypothesis that if you're spamming, scamming and phishing, you're trying to trick people who aren't paying attention, are inexperienced and are curious. For that target group, the exact text doesn't matter. In fact, the more you do your best to make the email look professional, the sooner the people who are good at filtering signal and noise, will call you out. There might be an advantage to looking like an inept predator: the real watchmen will shrug and think "who would fall for that?"
Maybe it will finally get us to actually go after the scammers and those protecting them instead of trying to paper over the issue with technological solutions. There is a reason we don't all wear kevlar when going outside.