People under 25 are falling in droves for the lavish payouts promised by rudimentary Instagram scams. Until recently, older people (those over 50 and in retirement) were considered to be most vulnerable to various scams perpetrated online. It makes perfect sense: a generation not particularly well-versed in the ways of this new online world would indeed be expected to fare poorly when faced with its challenges.
All that is apparently a thing of the past now. Those who currently make up the over-55 age-category, have grown somewhat immune to the tricks of the online scammers. The young adult category has become the preferred target of shady online operators, and yes, that means you too. These days, young people on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the likes, are the most likely to fall for get-rich-quick schemes, even if these schemes are rudimentary and lack any kind of credibility, even at first glance.
The scammers start out by setting up Instagram accounts. To the expert eye, these accounts are very easy to spot and they do tend to be mostly alike. They feature pictures of attractive young people, posing in front of expensive mansions and cars while holding up wads of cash – as if saying: this could be you! Accounts featuring attractive young women tend to draw noticeably more followers for obvious reasons. There are also plenty of such scam accounts featuring the alleged profiles of attractive young men too. The scammers do not want to leave any demographic group uncovered and since they are sort of saying “this could be you”, they need characters their targeted people can identify with.