Digital Dakoos and their Diet of Fear and Greed

Let's Talk Money with Monika Halan

Monika Halan explores the psychological tactics used by cybercriminals, specifically focusing on how fear and greed are leveraged to execute

Key takeaways

• Cyber fraudsters use 'digital arrest' and fake KYC alerts to trigger fear-based paralysis.
• Greed is exploited through FOMO and 'get-rich-quick' schemes like fraudulent WhatsApp/Telegram trading groups.

Main topics

• Psychology of cyber fraud
• Digital arrest scams

Notable quotes

They are not just hacking your phone or your computer. They are hacking your mind.

Conclusion

True financial security comes from creating a disciplined system of ru

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi, I'm Monica Hallan and this is my podcast, Let's Talk Money. Every Friday, a new episode will drop that gives you a snapshot analysis of one money-related topic that has meaning in your life. And then I answer your money questions. My hope is to put you on the path to financial stability and freedom. So, let's talk money. Speaker 1 (0:29) Today, I want to talk to you about cyber fraud. We spend so much time earning money, thinking about investing, investing, the whole rodeo we do. And then some digital daco comes along and just shakes it off us. It's just, it's very painful. I believe that it's not just a technology problem that we are allowing them straight into our bank accounts. I think it's also our own behavior problem. It's also how we react to certain things. And we often imagine that people who fall victims are careless, uninformed. They don't understand technology. They don't understand money. But that's not really true. Enough intelligent, educated, financially sophisticated people can be defrauded. Because the people who are actually doing this, the fraudsters, they are not just hacking your phone or your computer. That's technology. They are hacking your mind. They are trying to get inside our mind under our skin. And I understand that the two most powerful levers that they use are fear and greed. These are primordial triggers to a human being. Fear and greed. Fear makes you act without thinking because you get paralyzed. It's danger to you or yours. And greed makes you want something so badly that you just stop asking questions. You just want the outcome. You don't care about any red flags. So I'll just focus on these two things today. So yes, you know all of that. OTP, don't share. See that you know. But let's go deeper. Let's go find out how do we stop somebody from getting inside our head and pressing our buttons. Let's talk about fear first. It's really the base human trigger. We don't have to let anybody take control of our mind. Speaker 1 (2:31) So let's say that there's a video call. One, don't take a video call ever from an unknown number. Let's say the other person introducing, he says, I'm a police officer. He tells you your Aadhaar has been used to open a bank account. And he says, your name has come up for investigation. Before you can process what's happening, he tells you you are under a digital arrest and you must stay on the call. You must not speak to anyone. You must transfer money to a particular account. You're confused. You're frightened. You don't know what to do. And this is exactly what the fraudster wants. Sometimes I feel they also use hypnosis to try and get you to just stay there. So one is, of course, any unknown number. I simply don't take a video call. If you want to reach me, email me, WhatsApp me. Definitely don't call if I don't know you. And a video call? Never. So these are some basic rules that you put into place because they are not giving you time to think. They are creating a situation where you feel you have to comply. Otherwise, you could be in jail or something worse. Speaker 1 (3:42) And if you took a moment to think about it, have you done anything wrong? Answer is probably no. You don't need to prove your innocence to a stranger on a video call. You have to verify this independently. So you don't have to react to the urgency which is created by somebody else. So they're trying to create a situation of urgency and you're letting fear override everything else. There's one more thing. I find that it's also good to keep, to not allow anybody to have a lever on you, which means leading a pretty boring life. But it almost does not let anybody have any leverage over you. So long back, I was still working in Mint. And, you know, in the office email, this mail drops in and it says that you've been visiting objectionable sites. And we will let everybody in your office know. So you need to transfer so much of crypto into some account. Now, the thing is, I have never ever visited any whatever is called these objectionable sites. OK, neither in office, nor at home. So I know for a fact that this is a spam call. This is a it's a cybercrime message. Now, imagine if this were true. then I would have this doubt in my mind that what if, but I didn't. So I just ignored it. So this person kept trying, kept mailing over and over. We will let everybody know you go here, you go there. So I didn't reply. I was just thinking, knock yourself out. Like, yeah, whatever, do what you want. And I think it extends to a lot of other places in our lives. The lesser leverage you give anybody over what you might have done in your past, in your actions, Speaker 1 (5:34) There's not even a moment of doubt when somebody makes this fraudulent call that you've done something wrong because you know you have not. So other than the procedural things, the other thing is to completely have a clean life so that nobody can use this leverage against you. Of course, they use lots of other leverages that we will cut your electricity, your bill is not paid, there is