What is the supposed regulatory solution to grandma being convinced that she needs to pay the government with iTunes gift cards?
I know people working for a gift card company. Their customer support has often had to argue to grandmas that, no, the IRS or jail does not accept iTunes gift cards. These people are so caught up in the scam by the time they go buy gift cards that they will SCREAM at you if you attempt to explain what is going on. They have already been told by the scammer that people will try and prevent them from buying the gift cards and they STILL go along with it.
The gift card company does not want this to happen, because those sales are guaranteed chargebacks, and therefore guaranteed negative profit. But there's nothing you can program into a risk model to prevent grandma from buying a gift card and sending the code to someone willingly.
Actually, there was one thing that worked okay: Banning the entire country of Nigeria from receiving gift cards in any way, but that made some employees uncomfortable and is no longer as effective.
You dont even need grandmas. At work an office employee who is in her 40's almost believed our electric would be turned off unless we paid the power company in gift cards. Thankfully another office employee overheard the conversation and put a stop to it. Some people are very gullible when presented with panic situations and their brain turns off.
> Over the next 10 hours, the criminals would try several methods to steal her money. The one that worked without a hitch was getting her to buy gift cards.
You can’t regulate your way out of people paying fake governments in iTunes gift cards. All regulation would do is make it harder to conduct legitimate business
I know people working for a gift card company. Their customer support has often had to argue to grandmas that, no, the IRS or jail does not accept iTunes gift cards. These people are so caught up in the scam by the time they go buy gift cards that they will SCREAM at you if you attempt to explain what is going on. They have already been told by the scammer that people will try and prevent them from buying the gift cards and they STILL go along with it.
The gift card company does not want this to happen, because those sales are guaranteed chargebacks, and therefore guaranteed negative profit. But there's nothing you can program into a risk model to prevent grandma from buying a gift card and sending the code to someone willingly.
Actually, there was one thing that worked okay: Banning the entire country of Nigeria from receiving gift cards in any way, but that made some employees uncomfortable and is no longer as effective.