I Hate Scams! (An English Lesson)

One of the things that really bothers me in life, something that really annoys me

is when someone tries to trick me so that I give them money.

And what bothers me even more is when people try to trick you so that you give them money.

So I thought the best thing to do is to make an English lesson about this topic.

In this English lesson, I'll talk about all the words and phrases we use

to describe dishonest people who try to trick us so that we give them money.

And along the way, not only will you learn words and phrases,

hopefully you'll also learn how to avoid those situations

altogether.

The first situation I want to talk about is called a scam.

A scam is when a person called a scammer tries to trick you into giving them money.

They try to scam you.

So a scam is when a scammer tries to scam you.

They do this by telling you something you want to believe.

And this can happen via a phone call, a text message,

maybe in an email or even in the comments below a YouTube video.

By the way, be careful about the comments because here's my example of a scam.

Sometimes below my videos someone will pretend to be me

and they'll tell you something you want to believe.

They'll tell you that you won something and they'll give you a WhatsApp number

or a Telegram contact that they want you to follow up with.

And by the way, this is always a scam.

I don't give away stuff on my channel.

I don't even have WhatsApp or Telegram.

But this person is trying to tell you something so that you believe them.

And it begins kind of a series of steps

in which they try to trick you into giving them money.

So when you see something that you think is a scam, don't fall for what

the scammer is saying because all they want to do is scam you.

The second situation I wanted to talk to you about is called a rip-off.

A rip-off is usually when you do buy something,

but the thing you buy doesn't end up being what you thought it was going to be.

It ends up being a rip-off.

By the way, there's also a verb to rip off so you can say something is a rip-off,

or you can say that someone is going to rip you off.

Here's a great example.

When you buy a dozen eggs, you expect that there will be 12 eggs in the carton.

If you were to buy a dozen eggs from someone and when you got home

and you opened it and there were only ten eggs, you would say that was a rip-off.

You would say in the past tense that you got ripped off.

So a rip-off or to be ripped off or to rip someone off

refers to a situation where you did pay for something,

but the thing you got isn't exactly what you thought you were paying for.

It was a rip-off.

The third situation I wanted to talk to you about is when someone is selling

something that is a fake or it is counterfeit, or it is a knockoff.

I'm sure you've all been to the tourist area of a large city.

When I go to Niagara Falls, there's an area where people are selling

Gucci bags and Rolex watches, but they're really, really cheap.

We would say that these are counterfeit watches or these are knockoffs

or we would say that they are fakes.

So be careful.

This happens especially in touristy areas of large cities.

There's people who sell things that look like they are the real deal,

but they're actually counterfeit or they're fakes, or they're just knockoffs.

Don't buy them.

The fourth situation I wanted to talk to you about is something called phishing.

Now, this kind of phishing is not the same as this kind of fishing.

With this kind of fishing, you're trying to catch fish.

But with this kind of phishing, people are trying to get your personal information

or convince you to install something on your computer.

So they'll usually send you an email or a text with a link in it.

And when you click on that link, bad things start to happen.

So phishing is not necessarily when people are trying to trick you into giving them money.

They might just be looking for your personal information

or to get you to install something on your computer.

The best way to avoid phishing is to never

click on links in emails or in text messages.

It's just a bad idea.

Let's talk about four phrasal verbs related to this topic.

The first one is to get away with.

When you get away with something,

it means you do something wrong or illegal and you don't get caught.

The people who are trying to scam other people want to get away with it.

They want to do something illegal and they don't want the police to catch them.

The second phrasal verb is to fall for.

When you fall for something, it means you believe something that isn't true.

The scammers want you to fall for the thing they are telling you.

They want you to believe what they are saying so that they can scam you.

The third phrasal verb is the phrasal verb to prey on.

Scammers usually prey on a certain segment of the population.

When you prey on someone, it means you take advantage of them.

It means you trick them to give you money and other things.

Sometimes scammers will prey on older people

because they know it's easier to convince older people to give them things.

And then the last phrasal verb is the phrasal verb to walk away.

The best thing to do in all these situations is to simply walk away.

The best way to avoid being scammed is to not get scammed at all

by just walking away and doing something else.

So you might be wondering why I made this video.

Well, two reasons.

Number one, I think it's important for you

to know these English words and phrases so you can talk about scams.

And number two, because I'm getting tired of the people

that try to scam you in my comments section below my videos.

Every once in a while I will delete comments from someone who's pretending to be me

trying to trick you into giving them your money.

So if you ever see a comment below a video

and it looks like me, but there's also a WhatsApp number or the person

pretending to be me is saying contact me via telegram because you've won something.

It's not me.

It's a scammer trying to trick you into giving them your money.

So please don't fall for that.

I try to delete them as quickly as possible, but every once in a while I miss one.

And I do thank all of the viewers who send me a message

when they see the scammers in my comments below, I do really appreciate that.

Anyways, thank you so much for watching this English lesson about the words

we use to talk about scams and all of those dishonest things.

Remember, if this is your first time here, don't forget to click that red subscribe button.

Give me a thumbs up, leave a comment and I hope you have

a great week. Bye!