Examples Of Deception And Scams

The Reasoning behind the Psychological Mind Games of Deception and Scams Trust is a two way street. Trusting people is somewhat second nature to some. Unfortunately, trust is very hard to come by these days with all of the deception and scams that people are using. A person may think that they could easily spot a scam or detect deception but it is not as easy as it seems. Deception and scams are important tools for illicit actors to use in order to gain the upper hand on whatever the situation may be. A deception is a form of a lie. Scams are similar to deception in the way that each are lies and are used to achieve the same goal. They are used to gain something about an individual whether it is trust, money information of some kind or simply

According to the definition by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) (2006), a scam is a misleading or deceptive business practice where a person receives an unsolicited or uninvited contact (for example: email, letter, phone or some sort of advertisement) and false promises. Examples of scams include bogus lotteries, a supposed inheritance from a distant foreign relative on their death bed, any type of foreign money making scheme, or loan services. For years now there has even been an email being sent to everyone from the FBI pertaining to money that has been allocated to you. The email is a complete scam and does not come from the FBI. The FBI has a whole department dedicated in fighting White Collar Crime. Deception goes hand in hand with scams. Throughout a scam the illicit actor is trying to get another person to buy into their idea and to do so they have to

However, there are four general categories of cues that people can use to detect both deception and scams, which include signs of nervousness, suppression, easily agitated or anxious, and idiosyncratic sources (von Hippel & Trivers, 2011). Sometimes it is easier to detect when something is a bit off. People who are familiar with each other 's habits can also detect deception via idiosyncratic signs of nervousness, suppression, and cognitive load, because different individuals reveal their mental states in different ways (von Hippel, & Trivers, 2011). For example, if a good friend, family or co-worker may all of a sudden start having behavioral changes or just start lying about something then that person will be able to tell something is