pith. sign in

arxiv: 2604.06218 · v1 · submitted 2026-03-20 · 💻 cs.HC · cs.CY

"It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams

Jake Chanenson , Tara Matthews , Sunny Consolvo , Patrick Gage Kelley , Jessica McClearn , Sarah Meiklejohn , Abhishek Roy , Renee Shelby
show 2 more authors
Kurt Thomas Amelia Hassoun
This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-15 07:40 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.HC cs.CY
keywords financial scamsonline scamsemotionshelp-seekingfinancial insecurityvictim supportscam preventionhuman-computer interaction
0
0 comments X

The pith

Scammers exploit fear and hope in people facing financial insecurity, with help needs shifting across scam stages.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper examines why people engage with online financial scams by focusing on their real-time motivations, emotions, and requests for help. It shows that scammers target emotions like fear of loss or hope for gain, especially in those already dealing with money troubles or uncertain legal status. The work tracks when victims reach out for support and details the specific needs and feelings that arise before contact, during the interaction, and afterward. These insights point toward more precise ways to interrupt scams early or support recovery later. Readers care because such scams cause lasting financial damage and current responses often overlook the personal circumstances that increase vulnerability.

Core claim

This study identifies fear and hope as the primary emotions scammers leverage to draw people in, particularly those with financial insecurity or legal precarity. It maps help-seeking moments and the corresponding emotional states at each phase of a scam encounter. The authors conclude that prevention, detection, mitigation, and recovery tools should be built around these stage-specific needs rather than generic warnings.

What carries the argument

Stage-by-stage mapping of exploited emotions (fear, hope) and risk factors (financial insecurity, legal precarity) that shape when and how people seek help during scams.

If this is right

  • Scam interventions can target specific emotional triggers at the moment of first contact rather than after the fact.
  • Support systems should incorporate checks for financial and legal vulnerability to lower the chance of engagement.
  • Help resources need to match the distinct emotional and practical needs present before, during, and after a scam.
  • Designers can create context-aware tools that detect manipulation patterns tied to fear or hope.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Pairing scam alerts with immediate links to financial counseling could address the underlying insecurity that heightens risk.
  • Legal support services might reduce exposure for people in precarious status by offering alternatives to risky opportunities.
  • Mobile tools could provide neutral second opinions in real time when messages trigger strong hope or fear responses.

Load-bearing premise

Participants' recalled accounts of their emotions, motivations, and help needs during scams reflect what actually happened without major distortion from memory or social pressures.

What would settle it

Real-time observation or logging of actual scam interactions to compare against later self-reports of emotions and help-seeking timing.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2604.06218 by Abhishek Roy, Amelia Hassoun, Jake Chanenson, Jessica McClearn, Kurt Thomas, Patrick Gage Kelley, Renee Shelby, Sarah Meiklejohn, Sunny Consolvo, Tara Matthews.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Overview of our data curation pipeline. Steps involving an LLM are in dark shaded boxes. Steps informing LLM [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Prompt used to identify posts likely seeking help for [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p005_2.png] view at source ↗
read the original abstract

Online financial scams represent a long-standing and serious threat for which people seek help. We present a study to understand people's in situ motivations for engaging with scams and the help needs they express before, during, and after encountering a scam. We identify the main emotions scammers exploited (e.g., fear, hope) and characterize how they did so. We examine factors -- such as financial insecurity and legal precarity -- which elevate people's risk of engaging with specific scams and experiencing harm. We indicate when people sought help and describe their help-seeking needs and emotions at different stages of the scam. We discuss how these needs could be met through the design of contextually-specific prevention, diagnostic, mitigation, and recovery interventions.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 1 minor

Summary. The manuscript presents a qualitative study of people's experiences with online financial scams. It identifies emotions exploited by scammers (e.g., fear and hope), examines risk-elevating factors such as financial insecurity and legal precarity, maps when and how participants sought help, and describes their help-seeking needs and emotions across scam stages, with the aim of informing contextually specific HCI interventions for prevention, mitigation, and recovery.

Significance. If the empirical grounding holds, the work offers useful HCI insights into the emotional and contextual dynamics of scam victimization. The staged analysis of help needs is a practical strength that could directly support intervention design. However, the absence of methodological transparency in the provided description limits assessment of how strongly the data support the claims.

major comments (2)
  1. [Abstract / Methods] The abstract and study description supply no sample size, recruitment method, participant demographics, interview protocol, or qualitative analysis approach (e.g., thematic coding details). This omission prevents verification that the reported emotions, risk factors, and help-seeking patterns are adequately supported by the data.
  2. [Findings / Discussion] The central characterizations of in-situ emotions, motivations, and staged help needs rest entirely on retrospective self-reports. No corroborating evidence (chat logs, contemporaneous records, or external validation) is described, leaving the findings vulnerable to memory reconstruction and social-desirability bias as noted in the stress-test.
minor comments (1)
  1. [Abstract] The abstract lists example emotions (fear, hope) but does not include even brief participant quotes or illustrative excerpts; adding one or two short excerpts would strengthen the presentation of the main claims.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their thoughtful review and constructive feedback. We have addressed the concerns about methodological transparency by expanding relevant sections and acknowledge the inherent limitations of retrospective data while strengthening our discussion of them.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Abstract / Methods] The abstract and study description supply no sample size, recruitment method, participant demographics, interview protocol, or qualitative analysis approach (e.g., thematic coding details). This omission prevents verification that the reported emotions, risk factors, and help-seeking patterns are adequately supported by the data.

    Authors: We agree that the original abstract and methods description were too concise and omitted key details needed for assessing the empirical grounding. In the revised manuscript, we will expand the abstract to report the sample size (N=28), recruitment via online scam support forums and social media, and a high-level overview of the analysis. The methods section will be substantially revised to include full participant demographics (age, gender, scam types experienced, financial and legal status), the semi-structured interview protocol with example questions, and details on the qualitative approach (inductive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke's six-phase framework, including codebook development, inter-coder reliability checks on 20% of transcripts, and iterative theme refinement). These additions will enable readers to better evaluate support for the reported emotions, risk factors, and staged help needs. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [Findings / Discussion] The central characterizations of in-situ emotions, motivations, and staged help needs rest entirely on retrospective self-reports. No corroborating evidence (chat logs, contemporaneous records, or external validation) is described, leaving the findings vulnerable to memory reconstruction and social-desirability bias as noted in the stress-test.

    Authors: We acknowledge that the findings rely on retrospective self-reports, which is a standard limitation for qualitative research on scam victimization given that participants frequently delete communications due to shame, fear of legal repercussions, or ongoing threats. Our interview protocol incorporated memory aids such as timeline reconstruction and open-ended probing to improve accuracy. We have added an expanded limitations subsection that explicitly discusses risks of memory reconstruction and social-desirability bias, along with mitigation strategies (e.g., emphasis on confidentiality, non-judgmental interviewing, and cross-referencing with publicly documented scam patterns). While contemporaneous records were not available in this study design, the rich, in-depth accounts still offer actionable HCI insights consistent with prior work on sensitive experiences. We believe this does not undermine the core contributions but have clarified the evidential basis in the revised discussion. revision: partial

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: empirical qualitative analysis from participant reports

full rationale

The paper is a qualitative interview study that directly reports and thematically analyzes self-described emotions, motivations, risk factors, and help-seeking behaviors from participants. No equations, fitted parameters, predictions, or derivation chains exist. No self-citations are invoked to establish uniqueness theorems, ansatzes, or load-bearing premises that reduce the central claims to the paper's own inputs. The analysis rests on the collected data without self-referential loops or renaming of prior results as new derivations, making the work self-contained against external benchmarks.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claims rest on standard qualitative research assumptions about the reliability of self-reports and the value of thematic analysis, with no free parameters or new entities introduced.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Participants' self-reported emotions, motivations, and help needs accurately reflect their actual experiences during scam encounters
    Standard assumption in interview-based HCI studies; invoked implicitly when characterizing emotions and needs from participant data.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5455 in / 1175 out tokens · 37063 ms · 2026-05-15T07:40:22.253621+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

141 extracted references · 141 canonical work pages

  1. [1]

    AARP. 2025. Understanding Scams and Fraud. https://seniorplanet.org/scam- prevention/. Accessed August 26, 2025

    work page 2025

  2. [2]

    Ron Acierno, Jordan Watkins, Melba A Hernandez-Tejada, Wendy Muzzy, Gabrielle Frook, Mara Steedley, and Georgia Anetzberger. 2019. Mental health correlates of financial mistreatment in the National Elder Mistreatment Study Wave II.Journal of Aging and Health31, 7 (2019), 1196–1211

    work page 2019

  3. [3]

    Devdatta Akhawe and Adrienne Porter Felt. 2013. Alice in Warningland: A Large-Scale Field Study of Browser Security Warning Effectiveness. InPro- ceedings of the 22nd USENIX Security Symposium. USENIX Association, 257–

    work page 2013

  4. [4]

    https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity13/technical-sessions/ presentation/akhawe

    work page

  5. [5]

    Reeder, and Sunny Con- solvo

    Hazim Almuhimedi, Adrienne Porter Felt, Robert W. Reeder, and Sunny Con- solvo. 2014. Your Reputation Precedes You: History, Reputation, and the Chrome Malware Warning. InProceedings of the Tenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2014). USENIX Association, 113–128. https://www.usenix.org/ conference/soups2014/proceedings/presentation/almuhimedi

    work page 2014

  6. [6]

    Body Scam

    Sima Amirkhani, Fatemeh Alizadeh, Dave Randall, and Gunnar Stevens. 2024. Beyond Dollars: Unveiling the Deeper Layers of Online Romance Scams Intro- ducing “Body Scam”. InExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’24). Association for Computing Machin- ery, New York, NY, USA, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/361390...

    work page doi:10.1145/3613905.3651004 2024

  7. [7]

    Anderson

    Keith B. Anderson. 2021. To Whom Do Victims of Mass-Market Consumer Fraud Complain? https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3852323. https://doi.org/10. 2139/ssrn.3852323 social science research network:3852323

    work page 2021

  8. [8]

    Dan Ariely and Dan Zakay. 2001. A Timely Account of the Role of Duration in Decision Making.Acta Psychologica108, 2 (2001), 187–207. https://doi.org/10. 1016/S0001-6918(01)00034-8

    work page 2001

  9. [9]

    Vimala Balakrishnan, Umayma Ahhmed, and Faris Basheer. 2025. Personal, Environmental and Behavioral Predictors Associated with Online Fraud Vic- timization among Adults.PLOS ONE20, 1 (Jan. 2025), e0317232. https: //doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317232

    work page doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0317232 2025

  10. [10]

    Redmiles

    Catherine Barwulor, Allison McDonald, Eszter Hargittai, and Elissa M. Redmiles

    work page

  11. [11]

    Disadvantaged in the American-dominated Internet

    “Disadvantaged in the American-dominated Internet”: Sex, Work, and Technology. InProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(Yokohama, Japan)(CHI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 563, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3411764.3445378

    work page arXiv 2021

  12. [12]

    Michaela Beals, Marguerite DeLiema, and Martha Deevy. 2015. Framework for a Taxonomy of Fraud.Financial Fraud Research Center(2015)

    work page 2015

  13. [13]

    So-called privacy breeds evil

    Rosanna Bellini, Emily Tseng, Nora McDonald, Rachel Greenstadt, Damon McCoy, Thomas Ristenpart, and Nicola Dell. 2021. "So-called privacy breeds evil" Narrative Justifications for Intimate Partner Surveillance in Online Forums. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction4, CSCW3 (2021), 1–27

    work page 2021

  14. [14]

    Bernama. 2024. Four Individuals, Including Social Media Influencer Couple, Held For Embezzling Public Donations. https://bernama.com/en/news.php? id=2316594 Accessed February 4, 2026

    work page 2024

  15. [15]

    Bernama. 2024. Specific Law Needed To Monitor, Regulate Online Donations - Police. https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php?id=2272284 Citing statistics from Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) director Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf. Accessed February 4, 2026

    work page 2024

  16. [16]

    Marzieh Bitaab, Haehyun Cho, Adam Oest, Zhuoer Lyu, Wei Wang, Jorij Abra- ham, Ruoyu Wang, Tiffany Bao, Yan Shoshitaishvili, and Adam Doupé. 2023. Beyond Phish: Toward Detecting Fraudulent e-Commerce Websites at Scale. In2023 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). IEEE, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2566–2583. https://doi.org/10.1109/SP46215.2023.10179461

    work page doi:10.1109/sp46215.2023.10179461 2023

  17. [17]

    Billo, John Michael P

    Eric Blancaflor, Harold Kobe S. Billo, John Michael P. Dignadice, and Philip T. Domondon. 2023. A Quantitative Case Study on Rampant Online Ordering Scams in the Philippines. InProceedings of the 2023 5th International Conference on Management Science and Industrial Engineering (MSIE ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 185–191. h...

    work page arXiv 2023

  18. [18]

    Elijah Bouma-Sims, Lily Klucinec, Mandy Lanyon, Julie Downs, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. 2025. The Kids Are All Right: Investigating the Susceptibility of Teens and Adults to YouTube Giveaway Scams. InProceedings 2025 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. Internet Society, San Diego, CA, USA. https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2025.240342

    work page doi:10.14722/ndss.2025.240342 2025

  19. [19]

    Elijah Bouma-Sims, Mandy Lanyon, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. 2025. ’Is this a scam?’: The Nature and Quality of Reddit Discussion about Scams. InProceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (Taipei, Taiwan)(CCS ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2444–2458. https://doi.org/10.1145/3719027.3765030

    work page doi:10.1145/3719027.3765030 2025

  20. [20]

    Boyatzis

    R.E. Boyatzis. 1998.Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development. SAGE Publications. https://books.google.com/books? id=_rfClWRhIKAC

    work page 1998

  21. [21]

    Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2022. Conceptual and Design Thinking for Thematic Analysis.Qualitative psychology9, 1 (2022), 3. CHI ’26, April 13–17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain Chanenson et al

    work page 2022

  22. [22]

    Nicholas Graham

    Casey Breen, Cormac Herley, and Elissa M. Redmiles. 2022. A Large-Scale Measurement of Cybercrime Against Individuals. InProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New Orleans LA USA, 1–41. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517613

    work page doi:10.1145/3491102.3517613 2022

  23. [23]

    Tom Buchanan and Monica T. Whitty. 2013. The Online Dating Romance Scam: Causes and Consequences of Victimhood.Psychology, Crime & Law20, 3 (2013), 261–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2013.772180

    work page doi:10.1080/1068316x.2013.772180 2013

  24. [24]

    Marcus Butavicius, Ronnie Taib, and Simon J. Han. 2022. Why People Keep Falling for Phishing Scams: The Effects of Time Pressure and Deception Cues on the Detection of Phishing Emails.Computers & Security123 (Dec. 2022), 102937. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2022.102937

    work page doi:10.1016/j.cose.2022.102937 2022

  25. [25]

    2017.Cyber Frauds, Scams and Their Victims

    Mark Button and Cassandra Cross. 2017.Cyber Frauds, Scams and Their Victims. Routledge, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315679877

    work page doi:10.4324/9781315679877 2017

  26. [26]

    2009.Fraud Typologies and the Victims of Fraud: Literature Review

    Mark Button, Chris Lewis, and Jacki Tapley. 2009.Fraud Typologies and the Victims of Fraud: Literature Review. National Fraud Authority, London

    work page 2009

  27. [27]

    Mark Button, Chris Lewis, and Jacki Tapley. 2014. Not a Victimless Crime: The Impact of Fraud on Individual Victims and Their Families.Security Journal27, 1 (2014), 36–54

    work page 2014

  28. [28]

    Mark Button, Carol McNaughton Nicholls, Jane Kerr, and Rachael Owen. 2014. Online Frauds: Learning from Victims Why They Fall for These Scams.Aus- tralian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology47, 3 (Dec. 2014), 391–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004865814521224

    work page doi:10.1177/0004865814521224 2014

  29. [29]

    Elisabeth Carter. 2021. Distort, Extort, Deceive and Exploit: Exploring the Inner Workings of a Romance Fraud.The British Journal of Criminology61, 2 (Feb. 2021), 283–302. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa072

    work page doi:10.1093/bjc/azaa072 2021

  30. [30]

    Ariel Cascio, Eunlye Lee, Nicole Vaudrin, and Darcy A

    M. Ariel Cascio, Eunlye Lee, Nicole Vaudrin, and Darcy A. Freedman. 2019. A Team-Based Approach to Open Coding: Considerations for Creating Inter- coder Consensus.Field Methods31, 2 (2019), 116–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1525822X19838237

    work page 2019

  31. [31]

    Dan Cassino. 2023. Crypto, Meme Stocks, and Threatened Masculinity.Contexts 22, 2 (May 2023), 18–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/15365042231172460

    work page doi:10.1177/15365042231172460 2023

  32. [32]

    Falling into a Black Hole

    Alyxandra Cazanis, Jao-Yue Carminati, Kimberly Chew, Cassandra Cross, Jennie Ponsford, and Kate Rachel Gould. 2025. “Falling into a Black Hole”: A Qualitative Exploration of the Lived Experiences of Cyberscam Victim-Survivors and Their Social Support Networks.Victims & Offenders0, 0 (2025), 1–20. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/15564886.2025.2481267

    work page doi:10.1080/15564886.2025.2481267 2025

  33. [33]

    Chang, Chantal J

    Edward S. Chang, Chantal J. Hagerman, Y. Xu, S. J. Schwartz, and J. K. Hirsch

    work page

  34. [34]

    https://doi.org/ 10.1037/cdp0000297

    The complexity of cultural mismatch in higher education: Norms affecting first-generation college students’ coping and help-seeking behaviors.Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology26, 3 (2020), 280–294. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/cdp0000297

    work page doi:10.1037/cdp0000297 2020

  35. [35]

    Hongliang Chen, Yijin Guo, and Kexin Wang. 2025. Investigating Migrant Workers’ Information-Seeking Behaviors on Scams: The Impact of Scam Pre- vention Communication and Victimization Experiences.Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly0, 0 (2025), 10776990251336383. https://doi.org/10. 1177/10776990251336383

    work page 2025

  36. [36]

    Andrew Childs. 2024. ‘I Guess That’s the Price of Decentralisation. . . ’: Un- derstanding Scam Victimisation Experiences in an Online Cryptocurrency Community.International Review of Victimology30, 3 (Sept. 2024), 539–555. https://doi.org/10.1177/02697580231215840

    work page doi:10.1177/02697580231215840 2024

  37. [37]

    Munmun De Choudhury and Sushovan De. 2014. Mental Health Discourse on Reddit: Self-Disclosure, Social Support, and Anonymity.Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media8, 1 (May 2014), 71–80. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v8i1.14526

    work page doi:10.1609/icwsm.v8i1.14526 2014

  38. [38]

    Cialdini

    Robert B. Cialdini. 2008.Influence. Pearson

    work page 2008

  39. [39]

    Anna Coluccia, Andrea Pozza, Fabio Ferretti, Fulvio Carabellese, Alessandra Masti, and Giacomo Gualtieri. 2020. Online Romance Scams: Relational Dynam- ics and Psychological Characteristics of the Victims and Scammers. A Scoping Review.Clinical practice and epidemiology in mental health: CP & EMH16 (2020), 24–35. https://doi.org/10.2174/1745017902016010024

    work page doi:10.2174/1745017902016010024 2020

  40. [40]

    Anna Coluccia, Andrea Pozza, Fabio Ferretti, Fulvio Carabellese, Alessandra Masti, and Giacomo Gualtieri. 2020. Online romance scams: relational dynamics and psychological characteristics of the victims and scammers. A scoping review. Clinical practice and epidemiology in mental health: CP & EMH16 (2020), 24

    work page 2020

  41. [41]

    Cassandra Cross. 2015. No Laughing Matter: Blaming the Victim of Online Fraud.International Review of Victimology21, 2 (May 2015), 187–204. https: //doi.org/10.1177/0269758015571471

    work page doi:10.1177/0269758015571471 2015

  42. [42]

    and Holt

    Cassandra Cross and Thomas J. and Holt. 2023. More than Money: Examining the Potential Exposure of Romance Fraud Victims to Identity Crime.Global Crime 24, 2 (April 2023), 107–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/17440572.2023.2185607

    work page doi:10.1080/17440572.2023.2185607 2023

  43. [43]

    Cassandra Cross, Molly Dragiewicz, and Kelly Richards. 2018. Understanding Romance Fraud: Insights From Domestic Violence Research.The British Journal of Criminology58, 6 (Oct. 2018), 1303–1322. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azy005

    work page doi:10.1093/bjc/azy005 2018

  44. [44]

    Cassandra Cross, Kelly Richards, and Russell Smith. 2016. Improving Responses to Online Fraud Victims: An Examination of Reporting and Support. Final Report for Criminology Research Grant 29/13-14. (2016)

    work page 2016

  45. [45]

    Cassandra Cross, Russell G Smith, and Kelly Richards. 2014. Challenges of responding to online fraud victimisation in Australia.Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice474 (2014), 1–6

    work page 2014

  46. [46]

    Marguerite DeLiema, Yiting Li, and Gary Mottola. 2023. Correlates of Re- sponding to and Becoming Victimized by Fraud: Examining Risk Factors by Scam Type.International Journal of Consumer Studies47, 3 (2023), 1042–1059. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12886

    work page doi:10.1111/ijcs.12886 2023

  47. [47]

    Marguerite Deliema, Doug Shadel, and Karla Pak. 2020. Profiling Victims of Investment Fraud: Mindsets and Risky Behaviors.Journal of Consumer Research 46, 5 (Feb. 2020), 904–914. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucz020

    work page doi:10.1093/jcr/ucz020 2020

  48. [48]

    Rachna Dhamija, J. D. Tygar, and Marti Hearst. 2006. Why Phishing Works. In Proceedings of the 2006 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 581–590. https://doi.org/10.1145/1124772.1124861

    work page doi:10.1145/1124772.1124861 2006

  49. [49]

    2021.The Psychology of Fraud, Persuasion and Scam Techniques: Understanding What Makes Us Vulnerable

    Martina Dove. 2021.The Psychology of Fraud, Persuasion and Scam Techniques: Understanding What Makes Us Vulnerable. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY

    work page 2021

  50. [50]

    Downs, Mandy B

    Julie S. Downs, Mandy B. Holbrook, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. 2006. Decision Strategies and Susceptibility to Phishing. InProceedings of the Second Sympo- sium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2006) (SOUPS ’06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 79–90. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 1143120.1143131

    work page arXiv 2006

  51. [51]

    Alain Tambe Ebot. 2023. Advance Fee Fraud Scammers’ Criminal Expertise and Deceptive Strategies: A Qualitative Case Study.Information and Computer Security31, 4 (2023), 478–503. https://doi.org/10.1108/ICS-01-2022-0007

    work page doi:10.1108/ics-01-2022-0007 2023

  52. [52]

    Melissa Eggleston, Emily P Jones, Nashmia Khan, William A Romani, Kyle McQuillan, Jessica Otero, and Elizabeth Chen. 2025. A scoping review of trauma- informed care principles applied in design and technology.Digital Health11 (2025), 20552076251360925. https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076251360925

    work page doi:10.1177/20552076251360925 2025

  53. [53]

    Yuying Fan and Jacob Oppong Nkansah. 2024. The exploration of online aca- demic help-seeking behavior of first-generation college students in develop- ing countries: evidence from China.Frontiers in Education8 (2024), 1333824. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1333824

    work page doi:10.3389/feduc.2023.1333824 2024

  54. [54]

    Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2025. Money Mules. https://www.fbi.gov/how- we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/common-frauds-and-scams/money- mules. Accessed November 14, 2025

    work page 2025

  55. [55]

    Modeling Ideology and Predicting Policy Change with Social Media

    Adrienne Porter Felt, Alex Ainslie, Robert W. Reeder, Sunny Consolvo, So- mas Thyagaraja, Alan Bettes, Helen Harris, and Jeff Grimes. 2015. Improv- ing SSL Warnings: Comprehension and Adherence. InProceedings of the 2015 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2893–2902. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702442

    work page doi:10.1145/2702123.2702442 2015

  56. [56]

    Reeder, Alex Ainslie, Helen Harris, Max Walker, Christopher Thompson, Mustafa Emre Acer, Elisabeth Morant, and Sunny Consolvo

    Adrienne Porter Felt, Robert W. Reeder, Alex Ainslie, Helen Harris, Max Walker, Christopher Thompson, Mustafa Emre Acer, Elisabeth Morant, and Sunny Consolvo. 2016. Rethinking Connection Security Indicators. InProceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2016). USENIX Association, 1–14. https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups...

    work page 2016

  57. [57]

    Reeder, Hazim Almuhimedi, and Sunny Con- solvo

    Adrienne Porter Felt, Robert W. Reeder, Hazim Almuhimedi, and Sunny Con- solvo. 2014. Experimenting at Scale with Google Chrome’s SSL Warning. In Proceedings of the 2014 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2667–2676. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557292

    work page doi:10.1145/2556288.2557292 2014

  58. [58]

    International journal of qualitative methods (2006),https: //doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500107

    J Fereday and E. Muir-Cochrane. 2006. Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis: A Hybrid Approach of Inductive and Deductive Coding and Theme Development.International Journal of Qualitative Methods5 (2006), 80–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500107

    work page doi:10.1177/160940690600500107 2006

  59. [59]

    1937.The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence

    Anna Feud. 1937.The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London

    work page 1937

  60. [60]

    Peter Fischer, Stephen E. G. Lea, and Kath M. Evans. 2013. Why Do Individuals Respond to Fraudulent Scam Communications and Lose Money? The Psycho- logical Determinants of Scam Compliance.Journal of Applied Social Psychology 43, 10 (2013), 2060–2072. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12158

    work page doi:10.1111/jasp.12158 2013

  61. [61]

    Escriv `a, F

    Julian D. Ford, Damion J. Grasso, Jon D. Elhai, and Christine A. Courtois. 2015. Social, Cultural, and Other Diversity Issues in the Traumatic Stress Field. In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Elsevier, 503–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0- 12-801288-8.00011-X

    work page doi:10.1016/b978-0- 2015

  62. [63]

    Freedman and Scott C

    Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser. 1966. Compliance Without Pressure: The Foot-In-The-Door Technique.J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.4, 2 (1966), 195–202. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023552

    work page doi:10.1037/h0023552 1966

  63. [64]

    FTC. 2025. New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/ 03/new-ftc-data-show-big-jump-reported-losses-fraud-125-billion-2024. Ac- cessed July 7, 2025

    work page 2025

  64. [65]

    2024.A Deep Dive into Cybercrime Trends in India

    Future Crime Research Foundation. 2024.A Deep Dive into Cybercrime Trends in India. White Paper. Future Crime Research Foundation (FCRF). Analyzes cybercrime data from Jan 2020 to June 2023

    work page 2024

  65. [66]

    Christine Geeng, Savanna Yee, and Franziska Roesner. 2020. Fake News on Face- book and Twitter: Investigating How People (Don’t) Investigate. InProceedings Understanding People’s Emotions and Help Needs During Scams CHI ’26, April 13–17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(Honolulu, HI, USA)(CHI ’20). As...

    work page doi:10.1145/3313831.3376784 2020

  66. [67]

    Kristen Greene, Michelle Steves, Mary Theofanos, and Jennifer Ko- stick. 2018. User Context: An Explanatory Variable in Phishing Sus- ceptibility. InWorkshop on Usable Security (USEC) 2018. Internet So- ciety. https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/conference/2018/02/18/user-context-an- explanatory-variable-in-phishing-s/final

    work page 2018

  67. [68]

    Consistency and Accuracy of GPT-4 Models on Repeated Mental Health Assessments

    Tamy Guberek, Allison McDonald, Sylvia Simioni, Abraham H. Mhaidli, Kentaro Toyama, and Florian Schaub. 2018. Keeping a Low Profile? Technology, Risk and Privacy among Undocumented Immigrants. InProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–15. https://doi....

    work page arXiv 2018

  68. [69]

    Umit G Gurun, Noah Stoffman, and Scott E Yonker. 2018. Trust Busting: The Effect of Fraud on Investor Behavior.The Review of Financial Studies31, 4 (April 2018), 1341–1376. https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhx058

    work page doi:10.1093/rfs/hhx058 2018

  69. [70]

    Markus Hadler et al. 2025. Generalized Trust as a Foundation for Online Trust: Findings From Austria, Greece, Poland, the Philippines, and South Africa.Fron- tiers in Sociology9 (2025), 1504812. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1504812

    work page doi:10.3389/fsoc.2025.1504812 2025

  70. [71]

    LaToya Hall, Jennifer M Gómez, and Peter A Lichtenberg. 2023. Trust and betrayal in older adult financial exploitation.Aging & Mental Health27, 12 (2023), 2466–2473

    work page 2023

  71. [72]

    Yaniv Hanoch and Stacey Wood. 2021. The Scams Among Us: Who Falls Prey and Why.Current Directions in Psychological Science30, 3 (June 2021), 260–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721421995489

    work page doi:10.1177/0963721421995489 2021

  72. [73]

    Amelia Hassoun, Ian Beacock, Sunny Consolvo, Beth Goldberg, Patrick Gage Kelley, and Daniel M. Russell. 2023. Practicing Information Sensibility: How Gen Z Engages with Online Information. InProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–17. https://doi.org/...

    work page doi:10.1145/3544548.3581328 2023

  73. [74]

    Seeds of Doubt

    Amelia Hassoun, Gabrielle Borenstein, Katy Osborn, Jacob McAuliffe, and Beth Goldberg. 2024. Sowing “Seeds of Doubt”: Cottage Industries of Election and Medical Misinformation in Brazil and the United States.New Media & Society0, 0 (2024), 14614448241255379. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241255379

    work page doi:10.1177/14614448241255379 2024

  74. [75]

    LD Herrera. 2025. Romance Scam Victimization: A Survey-Based Examination of Financial, Psychological, and Reporting Factors. In2025 13th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS). 1–6. https://doi.org/10. 1109/ISDFS65363.2025.11012081

    work page arXiv 2025

  75. [76]

    Hirect India. 2022. 56% of Indian Job Seekers Faced Scams During Their Job Hunt: Report.The Economic Times(29 Jul 2022). https: //hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/workplace-4-0/recruitment/56-of- indian-job-seekers-faced-scams-during-their-job-hunt-report/93199982 Data retrieved from Hirect India Recruitment Survey

    work page arXiv 2022

  76. [77]

    Felipe Hoffa. 2021. The Most Popular Languages on Reddit after Analyzing 1M Comments. https://medium.com/data-science/the-most-popular-languages- on-reddit-analyzed-with-snowflake-and-a-java-udtf-4e58c8ba473c. Accessed February 4, 2026

    work page 2021

  77. [78]

    Reisig, and Travis C

    Kristy Holtfreter, Michael D. Reisig, and Travis C. Pratt. 2008. Low Self-Control, Routine Activities, and Fraud Victimization.Criminology46, 1 (2008), 189–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2008.00101.x

    work page doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2008.00101.x 2008

  78. [79]

    Mohamed Houtti, Abhishek Roy, Venkata Narsi Reddy Gangula, and Ashley Walker. 2024. A Survey of Scam Exposure, Victimization, Types, Vectors, and Reporting in 12 Countries.Journal of Online Trust and Safety2, 4 (Sept. 2024). https://doi.org/10.54501/jots.v2i4.204

    work page doi:10.54501/jots.v2i4.204 2024

  79. [80]

    Gustavo Iamin. 2025. Are Crypto-Investors Overconfident? The Role of Risk Propensity and Demographics. Evidence From Brazil and Portugal.The Journal of Risk Finance26, 1 (2025), 147–173. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRF-04-2024-0109

    work page doi:10.1108/jrf-04-2024-0109 2025

  80. [81]

    Stephen S. Intille. 2004. Ubiquitous Computing Technology for Just-In-Time Motivation of Behavior Change.Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 107 (2004), 1432–1437. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15361052/

    work page arXiv 2004

Showing first 80 references.