The vast majority of scams literally work by them asking their victims to buy cryptocurrency or gift cards directly. Malware is exceedingly rare.
You know what would really help against scams? Avoid putting people in situations where they need to decide right now or they'll face punishment.
Modern society has created far too many situations where people need to react without being able to think through the consequences.
The only reason scams work is because there are enough actual situations with unnecessary life-or-death decisions.
Source? This article suggests otherwise: https://www.economist.com/interactive/asia/2026/04/10/scam-i...
Moreover it seems to be limited to south east asia for now. Just because you're in the US and all the scams you're getting is cold calls from microsoft tech support, doesn't mean scams with smartphone malware doesn't exist.
>You know what would really help against scams? Avoid putting people in situations where they need to decide right now or they'll face punishment.
>The only reason scams work is because there are enough actual situations with unnecessary life-or-death decisions.
In other words, "if we had world peace and everyone could hold hands and sing kumbaya, then we won't have to worry about scams!"