The Age of Spotting Scams by Eye Is Over: "Assume You Will Be Fooled," the 2026 Edition

In winter I shovel snow; in summer, one scorching day follows another. One body is not enough for all this. And the local newspaper? Bear sightings and scam reports have become its permanent regulars.

Now then. In January I wrote a piece called "Is there no such thing as perfect scam prevention?" AI has turned fraud into an organized business, mass-producing fake videos and fake voices that look and sound like the real thing. Half a year on, the situation has not improved. It has moved one step further.

There was a time when scam sites and scam emails came with helpful warning signs. The Japanese was slightly off, the photos were crude, the discounts made no sense. So we could fight by inspection: read the text, find the flaws, snort, and close the tab. That peaceful era is over. Today's fakes, thanks to translation AI, often write more polite Japanese than we do. The photos are stolen from real shops, so of course they look genuine - they are genuine. The old seawall called "you can tell by the broken Japanese" has quietly sunk beneath the waves.

As someone who runs websites, I feel this on my own skin. Even the logs of my small country site record, every single day, machines rattling the locks - late at night, on holidays, without a break. The other side is no longer "some bad person somewhere." It is a factory in operation: it does not rest, it feels no shame, and it keeps improving. They are professionals; we do this in the gaps of everyday life. Challenging them, under those conditions, to a contest of spotting flaws by eye is not a question of skill. It is choosing the wrong arena.

Updating what "assume you will be fooled" means

Six years ago, in a piece called "The scam is right next to you," I wrote that the deceiver is of course to blame, but the deceived side has its own carelessness too - and that instead of "I will not be fooled," you should build your immunity on the assumption that you will be. I have not changed that view by a single millimeter. In the end, you are responsible for yourself.

But 2026 calls for an addendum. That immunity can no longer be made of "attention" or "willpower." Attention runs out precisely on the days when you are tired, in a hurry, or wanting something badly. In my piece about bears I called it "the gap in the heart" - and that gap opens, without fail, in everyone, someday. So do not let the you of that day make the decision. Build the immunity not into your head, but into your routine. Taking responsibility for yourself is not a matter of spirit; it means setting these routines up in advance.

Four routines are enough.

One. Use separate email addresses. Do not pour everything into a single address. Split them: one for banking and finance, one for shopping, one for everyday contacts. Once you do, any message that arrives at an address it should never have reached gives itself away on the spot. When a "bank" writes to your shopping address, you do not even need to read the message. New mail becomes less alarming, too. The only troublesome part is the initial setup and the migration.

Two. Fix your entrances. Email, SMS, ads on social media - do not enter through the links they carry. Those are prompts, not entrances. Your entrances are your usual bookmarks and official apps, nothing else. If the business is real, you will always reach it by walking back in through the front door. The same goes for phone calls: if you do not recognize the matter, hang up once and call back yourself through the official number. Just as I wrote in January.

Three. Choose the path your money takes. Pay by methods that let you ask for help and compensation if something goes wrong. And the moment an advance payment to a personal bank account appears, the screening of that site is over. "Buy prepaid e-money at a convenience store and send us the codes" is beyond discussion. Whether the price is low, whether the Japanese is natural - you no longer need to think about any of it. The time spent wondering is a waste.

Four. When they rush you, walk away. "Today only." "Only a few left." "Complete the procedure now." All of that is their schedule, not yours. A deal that disappears if you sleep on it for one night was never a deal to begin with.

"First, search for it yourself and check" stays in place as the basic move that comes before these four. If you will not search, will not wait a single night, and will wire money to a stranger's personal account - then honestly, seen from the scammer's side of the counter, you are simply a prized customer.

If, even so, they get you

What routines cannot protect, in the end, is your own desire to gain quickly. The reason "secrets of success" keep selling to this day is not that the sellers never run out; it is that the buyers never do. A routine is, in the end, a mechanism that keeps the decision over your money out of the hands of the you whose heart has its gap open widest that day.

There is no such thing as perfect scam prevention - I wrote that in January, and I am not correcting it. It is fine that there is none. Just as there is no house that can never be broken into, perfection was never for sale in the first place. But you can make your house more troublesome than the one next door. Fraud, before it is a question of good and evil, is a business of efficiency. A customer with fixed entrances, who refuses advance payments, who waits one night, is nothing but a loss to them. The troublesome customers are the first to be crossed off the list of easy marks.

And if, despite everything, they do get you - that is the one moment when blaming yourself and going silent is the worst possible move. Do not be ashamed. Talk to someone, fast: family, the police, a public helpline, anyone. Get yourself to the side of those who can one day laugh and say, "I am so glad I asked for help back then."

I have stopped training my eye. What I train now is my routine.