Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Monday August 31 2020, @08:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the put-you-money-where-your-heart-is dept.

FBI warns of an increase in online romance scams:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation warns of online romance scams (also known as confidence fraud), an ongoing criminal activity that continues to cause large financial losses along with emotional effects with unpredictable consequences.

[...] "According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which provides the public with a means of reporting Internet-facilitated crimes, romance scams result in greater financial losses to victims when compared to other online crimes." reads the alert published by the FBI. "In 2019, almost 20,000 complaints categorized as romance scams were reported to IC3 (about 1,000 more than the previous year), and the losses associated with those complaints exceeded $475 million."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @08:52PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @08:52PM (#1044706)

    Know all them teenage girls on the net? Yep, FBI fishing for all you pedos.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Monday August 31 2020, @10:01PM (3 children)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Monday August 31 2020, @10:01PM (#1044722) Homepage

    By definition, anyone attracted to teenage girls is not a pedophile, as pedophilia is attraction to prepubescent children who are under 12 years old.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday August 31 2020, @10:26PM

      by krishnoid (1156) on Monday August 31 2020, @10:26PM (#1044728)

      Well, modulo the cross product of English and set theory. I think that's called ephebophilia, but maybe I'm confusing that with an attraction to certain tarantulas [wikipedia.org].

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @11:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @11:03PM (#1044739)

      I'm fairly sure that the accuracy of the term is not something that normal people care about.

    • (Score: 3, Disagree) by Grishnakh on Monday August 31 2020, @11:41PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday August 31 2020, @11:41PM (#1044758)

      Actually, this is incorrect.

      English is defined only by its popular usage, not the origins of its words or the roots of its words. Hence the term "decimate": it *should* mean to reduce something by one-tenth, because that's what in meant in Ancient Rome (killing 1 of every 10 soldiers as punishment), and should be obvious because "dec" means "ten" in Latin. However, in modern English, "decimate" is popularly used to indicate damaging something or someone far worse than that, and almost no one actually remembers the original meaning.

      In American English, therefore, "pedophilia" means being attracted to anyone under the age of 18, even if she's going to turn 18 tomorrow. This is how the term is used in America today, therefore, that's what it means. However, American English is a little different from English spoken in other countries, so in UK or India or New Zealand or wherever, just as "bonnet" might mean something other than a weird archaic clothing item for womens' heads, "pedophilia" might mean something a little different. (It might also not exist, and the similar word "paedophlia" might exist instead.)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @07:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @07:38AM (#1044852)

    The Internet: Where the men are men, the women are men, and the little girls are FBI agents.
    ---old joke.