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Abstract: As deepfakes and scams online become more common, many individuals, organizations and nation-states struggle to maintain trust and remain credible sources for their stakeholders. Increasingly algorithms shape the digital information landscape, choosing what content is displayed and deepening the individual silos of information seeking. Recently it has been suggested that the best efforts to combat misinformation are not to try to stop its spread but through understanding the vulnerabilities on which it lands in the individual receiving the false information. There is an urgent need to investigate the mechanisms and extent of deception in online environments, as little is known about these specific vulnerabilities that then cause individuals to become victims for online scams. In the digital environment, different vulnerabilities exist yet they result from siloed studies in specific contexts. This paper starts by categorizing the different levels on which digital communication may be vulnerable. Further, this research asks how these vulnerabilities are utilized and what persuasion tactics are at use when crypto scams are concerned. Building on the persuasion principles, this paper analyzes three recent highly successful online scams. The findings conclude that social proof and scarcity were most used influence mechanisms, suggesting that scam prevention needs to understanding the vulnerabilities on which these influence mechanisms build.
Keywords: Digital vulnerabilities, Misinformation, Persuasion tactics, Crypto currency, Scams
1. Introduction
New Al technologies of the post-truth era (Lewandowsky, Ecker, & Cook, 2017) enable the creation of increasingly convincing fake and false content. As nations and institutions are "unable to control the spread of either true or false information" online (Canel & Luoma-aho, 2019), vulnerability to digital scams and propaganda is increasing online. Furthermore, such lack of control causes fragility, reduces collaboration, and deepens information vacuums of lacking or missing information (Rhodes, 2022; Pamment, Nothhaft, Twetman, & 2018; Alaraatikka, Koistinen, Kaarkoski, Huhtinen, & Sederholm, 2022). Recent research suggests that central for the success of scams are the individual level vulnerabilities: how do the individuals evaluate the credibility of influence attempts and what are the digital vulnerabilities enabling these (Ariely, 2023)? Scams
build on the ability to persuade individuals that something is real. Persuasion, understood as a process of deliberately attempting to alter another individual's or group's beliefs, views, and behaviour (Gunden et al., 2020; Petty...