How scammers use psychology to create some of the most convincing internet cons – and what to watch out for

Online fraud is today’s most common crime. Victims are often told they are foolish for falling for it, but fraudsters use psychological mechanisms to infiltrate the defences of their targets, regardless of how intelligent they are.

So it’s important to keep up with the latest scams and understand how they work.

Recently, consumer protection magazine Which? identified some of the most convincing scams of 2023. These scams all have one thing in common – they insidiously take advantage of people’s cognitive biases and psychological blind spots.

They included “pig butchering” a way of fattening up victims with affection, the missing person scam which involves posting fake content on social media pages, the traditional PayPal scam, and a new scam called the “fake app alert” in which malware is hidden on apps that look legitimate.