Q&A: “I fell for a scam and want to help others…”

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I am your host, your guide.

I have the privilege of bringing you this daily podcast, which has been going for well over 1600 days now. All thanks to your support. All thanks to our amazing community. So let's talk about something that is frustrating and really difficult and annoying and actually causes harm to a lot of people. We're talking about online scams or hacks.

And I just wanna say, first off, it's so easy to fall for a scam or a hack these days. That's what our caller is gonna be talking about. But a friend of mine actually had an experience recently where they were selling their home and ended up paying something like $500 to someone who convinced them that there was a fee they needed to pay. And it's a long story, but just to make it short, like this friend is smart. This friend is well-educated.

It's not their first time using the internet. So it really could happen to anyone, right? And just the hackers and the scammers are getting more sophisticated. So our caller today had a similar experience, but they wanna turn this frustrating experience into a lesson for others and perhaps even a side income for themselves. And just to clarify, not by scamming people, it's more like helping people not get scammed.

Okay, just to be really clear. So to hear this lesson, here's what you need to do. Just log into your bank account and send me the numbers that appear on your screen. If you have a four digit pin, maybe send that to me as well. No, just kidding, don't do that.

Okay, don't do that for me or anyone. Question is, I fell for a scam. I wanna help others. What's the best way to do that? Question and my answer is coming up.

[Music]

Hi Chris, this is Gary and I'm embarrassed to say I recently fell for a banking scam. It was very clever. I know not to give out my personal info to strangers, but these guys seem to know a lot about me already. So I trusted them. By the time I clicked the wrong link and ended up on the phone with them, I was worried about my computer being infected by malware.

So I let them have access to my computer screen to fix it. Before I knew it, I had an alert from my bank that money was being withdrawn from my account. Fortunately, they only took a few hundred dollars before I realized what was happening and was able to stop it. The other good news is that I think my bank is going to refund the money, although they haven't said for sure yet. All of this makes me realize that a lot of people are vulnerable to these attacks.

I'd like to give online presentations to organizations where I share my story and give some advice. If it helps one person, it's worth it. The tricky part is knowing what to charge. This seems like something I should offer for free, but accept donations, not from the individuals, but from the company or organization that hosts my presentation. Do you think this is a reasonable expectation?

Thanks, Chris, and hope you don't get caught up in anything like this. - Thank you, Gary. I too hope that I don't get caught up in something like that, but I very much appreciate you sharing the story. And I'm sorry for your experience. I also know that a lot of people are having this experience in various ways, as I mentioned in the beginning, it's happened to multiple friends of mine because scammers just get more and more clever and hacking becomes more sophisticated and such.

So let's delve into the business idea here. I think Gary is correct that he shouldn't sell, avoid getting hacked or scammed as a direct to consumer product. Even though that's important information, it's a big benefit to help people not get scammed, it still feels kind of meta. It feels too meta to be like, pay me money to not get scammed. So his idea to pitch to organizations or companies does seem like a better option, at least between the two.

But still, I'm not quite sure it's sufficient. In other words, it's better, but is it enough? So my sense is Gary's experience is more of an entry point to something else. And I don't quite know what something else is, but I just think my suggestion is share the story. Again, share the story because people need to hear it.

And the more people who share these stories, the more cautious we all are. And the more we learn to not click certain links and to not fall for certain stories. So do share that story because it is beneficial, but also keep looking perhaps for a better business idea. Maybe use this as a bridge to a different answer. That's my two cents.

So send me your bank account info so I can deposit it. Just kidding. All right, listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature them, along with updates from listeners as they launch their projects. I am rooting for you.

I'm cheering you on. Take care of yourself. And as Gary said, be safe. Also come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Sidusle School." [Music]

- From the Onward Project.