Since the turn of the 21st century, fraud has been getting more and more complicated. In 2026, most Americans are conscious of security. Two-factor and hardware keys are becoming commonplace and a company unwilling to implement these measures may lose their customer base over easily found passwords.
We are a long way away from criminals getting a database on a company’s backend and having plaintext username/passwords to sell and make use of.
It seems social engineering is the most effective way for these unscrupulous humans to get the data they are really after. They may enter your life as private investigators working with police, accusing one or more family members of being something much worse than what they really are. They may show evidence to your family of crimes the investigators themselves have committed telling you they are investigating your family for having done it.
They may actually get real police to call and offer some kind of immunity for help with an investigation. Police cannot offer individuals immunity. That comes from a prosecutor.
These police officers, who offer this without an agreement from a prosecutor in writing are letting families of individuals that are being privately investigated commit heinous crimes against them.
As a citizen of the United States, if you ever hear a voice in your head talking to you intelligently, claiming to be the police, do not work with them. That is not traditional “mental health” but instead some new as of yet unexplained to the public technology being used by criminals to destabilize our country.
Some people are being blackmailed and threatened with death by the push of a button. These citizens when faced with death, will do whatever the voice in their head asks them to do. At one point when I was being threatened with death, I laid down on the floor on my back and waited to accept my fate.
Some citizens may care more about their life than their personal possessions and give everything up to the criminals. They come in your house one by one to take personal belongings as a group. The whole group scours all of your online accounts and pulls out as much as they can.
Imagine how this affects the police, who are also human beings.