alt Hacker NewsProtecting from scams isn't protection from the victim themselves. That should be obvious from the fact that very intelligent and technologically literate people too can fall for phishing attacks. Tell me for example, how many people in your life know how a bank would ACTUALLY contact you about a suspected hijacking and what the process should look like? And how about any of the dozens of other cover stories used? Not to mention the situations where the scammers can use literally the same method of first contact as the real thing (eg. spoofed). ...And the fact that for example email clients do their best to help them by obscuring the email address and only showing the display name, because that's obviously a good idea.
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None of these things requires "locking down phones." Every single thing you've mentioned can be done in a smarter way that doesn't involve "individuals aren't allowed to modify the devices they purchase."
> Protecting from scams isn't protection from the victim themselves.
That is where we differ. It is, ultimately, the victim of a scam who makes the choice of "yes, this person is trustworthy and I will do what they say". The only way to prevent that is to block the user from having the power to make that decision, which is to say protecting them from themselves.