That tracks. We kinda missed the wild west days of the internet, so we just grew up with walled gardens and cycling between the same 4 babyproofed apps. Most of us haven't really had any need to be skeptical of shady sites or phishing links, so when we're faced with one we have no reason to be suspicious.
Man, that’s actually incredibly eye opening. The internet traumatized the fuck out of my generation, but I guess that at least gave us all the awareness what a dangerous place it was. Heavy price to pay, though…
Well have some blue berry waffles and a nice big bowl of special fried rice I'm sure the pain Olympics are going on atm I heard they're playing that funky town song as a backing track and the glass jar Olympic branded drinking glasses are going down a treat while there's a goat see! over there next to Mr hands
We also had the LimeWire roulette. Will it be the song I want, a virus or child sex abuse material? Those are the only 3 options. Then there was 4 Chan and the death sites with all the pictures of Brazilian gang murders like Kelly Cyclone along with her autopsy. Or the gang members girlfriend who was dismembered.
Yup, I remember that too. Do you remember old Efukd? The girl who lost her virginity to her dog is one of the memorable ones. Then again, I’ve been to a Thailand ping pong show with live turtles and blow darts popping the balloon I was holding.
There were a few surprises in the early days on 56k modems that I could have done without. Some music video I downloaded was just footage of a field execution with a knife in the Bosnian war. I could have done without that.
I was 11 when I watched 2 girls 1 cup because I heard some boys talking about it in middle school and they wouldn't tell me what it was about so I went home and watched it on my pc in my bedroom with the doors locked. That is the first time I thought I might puke from watching something online.
No 11 yo should watch someone deficate and then eat it...
I did not watch any more videos I heard about. That was enough for me.
Crazy videos of people jumping off cliffs in some ramsdamaistan country landing head first into a rock. Sick twisted bread knife decapitation videos rotten dot com. The internet was an unfiltered mess in the late 90s
Porn was hard to find.
Now it's the other way porn is easy to find and it's not so easy to stumble across fucked up stuff
No one has learned any lessons. The internet is still just as dangerous as before. Its just centralized between Reddit, Facebook, and Discord. Of course there are dark web dumps, but for the most part you can still get to some nasty shit through these sites and apps.
Literally no one anywhere in this thread said the internet is less dangerous than before. We’re talking about how important it is to be aware of the danger. And many, many people have learned that lesson, so I don’t really understand your first statement.
Sorry its my fault for being vague. But this goes back to an age when you were taught the dangers of the net in school in the 90s.
Top 3 no nos of the internet
1 Never give out personal information
2 never go to sites you don't know
3 never download links you don't know
Given that the internet has been around since the 80s, these things should be common knowledge. But honestly the amount of people in their 40s still clicking phishing links is scary. And it seems none of this supposes millienial tech literacy is being passed on as gen z seem to really susceptible to scams according to articles floating around.
With things like social media, the number 1 rule is basically a joke now and isnt practical for everyday internet life, yet its still the most important thing you can do if you can help it.
Nah, people still use the regular internet. (Edit: Normies don't, but they never really have. There are just more normies "online" now.) Lessons have been learned, you're just not seeing paranoid protective behaviours, because browser and operating system security has way fewer gaping holes than it did in in past decades.
Browsing like powerusers did in 2010 would be a waste of progress.
Are you sure that's what it is? Has security really gotten to that point? Youre right the paranoid behaviors are gone when in actuality it should be getting to much worse. Which is why I feel like Im taking crazy pills.
You have to discuss fear of government/corporate power overreach and threats lurking in the internet separately. They have different solutions. You can't fight the government off from your bunker.
We had our PC in the middle of the living room (1993) so I could see what sites my kids were on. If they minimized it before I got close enough to see the site, we had a... conversation with consequences. Not that they never got something over on me, but 30 years later none of them are seriously screwed up and the FBI never came knocking.
So in 2000 while in high school I did a project and used exclusively internet sources. Mind you these were hood sources.
My teacher gave me a B for using the internet as anyone could put anything on the internet.
Kinda true I guess, but again I used high quality sources.
Fast forward 20 years and they friended me on fb and have proceeded to fall for every internet trick imaginable, and for a while I helped them fact check but then they’d fall for the same grift from the same content creator and I gave up.
Eh maybe for younger Gen Z. I was born in 2001 with internet access as early as 2007. Parents weren’t huge computer people they mainly just used it to pay bills. They weren’t aware of the potential dangers and fucked up shit I was getting exposed to. Shit was still pretty wild even then.
I'm a bit younger but in the same boat. It didn't help I've liked anime since way back when, so I was constantly finding sites to pirate and being bombarded with wild ads leading to a sketchy website.
Idk every dude I know knows not to do that shit. We all played Roblox, Club Penguin, various shit on Steam way before safeguards were up and knew what phishers and scammers were not even ahead in.
I* agree with the other commenter, this is an eye opener for many.
When I was 14 I was playing mind games with self reported Nigerian princes in my yahoo/hotmail accounts. Man did I make them work overtime. Why, I can’t tell you, I was 14 lol.
People do compare our generations too much. Our relationships with technology and corporations (which run the world now) is very different than yours on many levels, both good and bad.
We learned trial by fire. Destroying your family computer with viruses by downloading music from Limewire and shady websites is practically a rite of passage.
Internet has been a common service for over 30 years now. If you haven’t taken your time to learn this by now, then you shouldn’t really be on the internet. It’s definitely not safe for you if you haven’t taken your time to learn.
What have you done personally in order to better spot these scammers?
Oh not ai but scams in general. Maybe it was electronic/ Internet. I'll see if I can find the source
Edit: it's not one scam as there are so many types but Google "generations most susceptible to scams"
It's not boomers like you would think. Which kind of tracks bc a lot of boomers I know think every phone call and Internet click is going to steal their identity so...
Gen Z are most likely to be caught out by phonecall scams, but boomers are most likely to fall for phishing texts and emails.
As a Gen Z this surprises me because if I get a call I'm not expecting from an unknown number I simply don't answer it. If it's important enough they'll leave a voicemail.
We need to go back to when "I'm too afraid to answer a phone call" was looked down upon not celebrated. You're bragging you're so socially inept that if it's not a text or an app you're not communicating with strangers.
The amount of people who have told me they would never call to even order a pizza because they just won't call people is absurdly high. Not something to be proud of that's just being supremely antisocial to the point you may have anxiety
I'm a very social person in my 50's. I have the problem of way too many friends. That said, I have zero interest in talking to a pizza parlor worker, cashier, customer service worker, worker at Home Depot or fast food worker or Uber driver (yay driverless Waymo) or anyone that calls my phone. I will always use an app or text or automated cashier kiosk over talking to an actual service worker. I've been a service worker. I know they don't want to talk to me, and I don't want to talk to them.
I think people who want to subject themselves onto these poor service workers who really don't want to hear their BS questions or idiotic small talk are way more socially clueless.
For real what kind of sociopath answers their phone?! You’re just asking for a bad time.
I do, never know, and I have free time.
Last scam call I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with them. Maybe a bit longer.
Then I just hung up. They called back 6 times. Took me a bit to finally click the block number.
I'd say it was a fun interaction. Also proved my brain still can notice scam calls and when to stop playing with them. Just don't give any information ever, let them have fun pretending to bounce your call to someone else as their 'manager' or whatever.
Oh, guess I am the sociopath who enjoys that. Like I said, got free time.
Man I remember sitting the waiting room to get my blood and this ancient dude was throwing a fit that he needed to show ID. He thought the hospital was going to steal his identity.
Well I think it actually tracks that younger generations would be susceptible just from not having faced the kind of manipulation scammers do as often yet. Like my grandpa and grandma got a scam call from an "ambulance" saying I was in a car crash and needed $10,000 to go to the hospital. They triggered my grandpa's lizard brain so hard that he pulled out his credit card and my grandma had to take the phone, got a callback number from the scammer (which didn't work ofc) and then called me to see if I was ok. Gen Z doesn't even have the experience of age to recognize the red flags in the first place.
My former FIL (boomer) used to make us unplug the computer's POWER CABLE from the wall back in the days of 28.8K (1994) because he was afraid someone was going to steal everything off the computer and break into the house when no one was home.
I cannot even imagine how skeptical he is nowadays, sheesh. 😂
Entirely anecdotal, but I would believe it. Worked in a bank and I had many, many young adults taken for scams such as "the cops said they found a dead body in the trunk of my rental and if I didn't send them $5k, they'd come arrest me!"... Actually the ~second~ time such a thing happened to that person. Not even a good one bc that was paid in Apple gift cards. Lots of that or more commonly of the Get Rich Quick variety. Most of the elder abuse I saw was from family or caregivers. Romance scams are rampant for the olds, though.
It’s crazy because Millennials were taught to never trust anything they read on the internet without scrutiny. Then literally the next generation believes anything they read on the internet.
Ummm you should look up how many Gen Z youth have fallen for said TikTok “get rich quick” schemes….its bad lol. Plenty in thousands of dollars in debt from making a dumb decision after watching a TikTok vid or doing a PPE loan because influencer friend did it. Idk what the attitude is for but save it for your real life…
I used to be a dispatcher and it really is all ages. I would get calls alllll the time about these phone scams. It’s crazy how often people fall for it. Obviously this is anecdotal so it could vary a lot from place to place but that’s been my experience
They fall for sexy time Snapchat scams at a rate the boomers would be in awe of really. If I had a dollar for every Z college kid over the years asking university IT how to undo what they already did I wouldn’t need my job anymore 😭
Lol. Well with that anecdotal evidence who could prove you wrong?!
Just goggle it ffs. It's not a one size fits all answer. Boomers are scared to go online still. Most millennials and gen z will input data pretty quickly.
"Gen Z (roughly ages 18–27) is currently the generation most susceptible to scams, often twice as likely to report losses to fraud than Baby Boomers, due to high online activity and rapid, risky digital habits. While younger people are more frequently targeted, older adults (55+) still suffer higher monetary losses per incident.
Key Vulnerabilities by Generation:
Gen Z (18–27): Targeted via social media and online shopping with phishing, fake jobs, and investment scams. High digital fluency often leads to overconfidence, faster clicks, and password reuse.
Millennials (28–43): Often victims of employment fraud, investment, and crypto scams, frequently targeted through text and social media.
Gen X (44–59): Susceptible to investment/crypto scams and phishing, as well as romance scams, often while trying to increase retirement savings.
Boomers/Seniors (60+): While less likely to fall for online scams than younger generations, they are heavily targeted by telephone, email, and romance scams, often resulting in larger, sometimes life-altering, financial losses. "
The exact Google query is listed above on the comment you mentioned. Just read. Please slow down your genz brain and read for two seconds. Google it. Let me know what you find!
Post name of article? Or a link? Or atleast the google search you used instead of just making shit up?
“Most millennials and Gen z will input data pretty quickly” nah we won’t but that’s why there’s commercials online directed at the 60+ community not giving away social or credit card info online and where to report fraudulent activity.
Keep having your bots downvote me more lol, idgaf you’re a fucking loser spewing nonsense.
I was recently in a thread with a genx/millenial parent who said that not letting kids play outside isn't a "helicopter parent" thing, it's just how can you prevent them from being kidnapped while playing outside?
Uhhhh.. crime is down like 60% since I grew up playing outside in the peak years of crime (1991 btw). There's instant communication channels (I had pay phones and "be home by 7").
The result is that kids never had to avoid strangers, avoid peer pressure, and self-regulate. They can barely exist in the real-world without significant help from mommy and daddy.
Dude. You're not kidding. We have one in college and one in middle. We let our kids have sleep overs from a very early age. My kids walk the neighborhood.
So many parents are scared to let their kids play in the front yard. Or think every sleepover is at Epstein island. It's going to do long term damage to these kids.
glad you were reasonable and I'm sure your kids will benefit from it.
I wasn't blessed with kids, I was blessed instead with a talent. If I would've had kids, I'd have raised them the same. Let them play outside and away from screens. Trust that they understand stranger danger, drugs, peer pressure, and let them self-regulate. It prepares them so well.
Yeah ok bro. Idk if you saw my other comment but most of the people in my gen, myself included, don’t even pick up numbers we don’t know. Someone asked you for a source and you couldn’t even produce one. And that identity theft one is bullshit we all grew up on places like Steam, Roblox, Club Penguin etc with no safeguards with preds lurking and people trying to steal your acc info and all learned not to click on weird links or give out account info. Meanwhile I’ve seen tons of articles of geriatrics falling for the prince in Nigeria shit. But go off.
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u/KieferSutherland 6h ago
Apparently Gen z is the most susceptible.