Of course it works, because lying to people to instill a sense of urgency plays on our base emotions and gets us to do things we might not rationally do.

Sellers of snake-oil and other fake "remedies" have been using this sales tactic--"your friends and neighbors have already tried it, look here, see this line of people ready to buy!" that are all plants--since the days of the horse-and-buggy.

Doesn't mean we should still keep lying to our friends and neighbors.

Thanks for making the world just a little bit worse :(

There are some organizations (though I don't know how plentiful) that use real data to derive these alerts. And I'd say that as long as it's all above-board and not fake data, that 15% is legitimately earned.