"It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866911574247079936 |
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| author | Chanenson, Jake Matthews, Tara Consolvo, Sunny Kelley, Patrick Gage McClearn, Jessica Meiklejohn, Sarah Roy, Abhishek Shelby, Renee Thomas, Kurt Hassoun, Amelia |
| author_facet | Chanenson, Jake Matthews, Tara Consolvo, Sunny Kelley, Patrick Gage McClearn, Jessica Meiklejohn, Sarah Roy, Abhishek Shelby, Renee Thomas, Kurt Hassoun, Amelia |
| contents | Online financial scams represent a long-standing and serious threat for which people seek help. We present a study to understand people's in situ motivations for engaging with scams and the help needs they express before, during, and after encountering a scam. We identify the main emotions scammers exploited (e.g., fear, hope) and characterize how they did so. We examine factors -- such as financial insecurity and legal precarity -- which elevate people's risk of engaging with specific scams and experiencing harm. We indicate when people sought help and describe their help-seeking needs and emotions at different stages of the scam. We discuss how these needs could be met through the design of contextually-specific prevention, diagnostic, mitigation, and recovery interventions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_06218 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | "It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams Chanenson, Jake Matthews, Tara Consolvo, Sunny Kelley, Patrick Gage McClearn, Jessica Meiklejohn, Sarah Roy, Abhishek Shelby, Renee Thomas, Kurt Hassoun, Amelia Human-Computer Interaction Computers and Society Online financial scams represent a long-standing and serious threat for which people seek help. We present a study to understand people's in situ motivations for engaging with scams and the help needs they express before, during, and after encountering a scam. We identify the main emotions scammers exploited (e.g., fear, hope) and characterize how they did so. We examine factors -- such as financial insecurity and legal precarity -- which elevate people's risk of engaging with specific scams and experiencing harm. We indicate when people sought help and describe their help-seeking needs and emotions at different stages of the scam. We discuss how these needs could be met through the design of contextually-specific prevention, diagnostic, mitigation, and recovery interventions. |
| title | "It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06218 |