If people still go for it, then it is their responsibility. A lot of things in life require responsibility because otherwise the results can be disastrous. But we don't forbid them, because it would be a huge violation of freedoms.
You have to take into account that the threat model here is vulnerable people, often older, being taken in by scammers who talk to them for weeks and gain their complete confidence. To the victims, it feels like a real romantic relationship, not someone who could even possibly be a scammer.
Also, scams also happen outside smartphones.
What's next? Are we going to revoke people's control over their financials because they might be scammed? Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction. And since we are using their payment platform, maybe they should also take 30%.
Please stop feeding their narrative. Scammers are Google/Apple's "but think of the children".
Aren’t they? I ask my partner for investment opinions all the time.
> Let's have the bank approve before we can do a transaction.
Yes… That’s already how it works. Banks use heuristics to detect and prevent suspicious transactions. That’s why most of these scams ultimately involve crypto.
Obviously, the probability of it being a scammer reduces with the amount of time. In the end it's a function of time vs. effort. Scamming billionaires by marrying them and waiting until they die happens frequently enough. A 5 year scam for a few thousand bucks, unlikely.
As usual, use common sense, which you would have to do anyway if you do investments.
... and it's really fucking annoying when their heuristics misfire-- which is not at all rare-- especially since they do all they can to externalize all costs of that to the customer.
We've been trying to educate people about passwords and phishing for years/decades now, and it has not worked. Further, every day a new ten thousand (US) people need to be educated:
The proverbial grandparents will follow the instructions of the scammers and will click through all of that. We've had decades of empirical evidence: people will keep clicking and tapping on dialogue boxes to achieve their goal.
People have physically driven to cryptocurrency ATMs on the instructions of scammers:
* https://bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=2136...
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/04/21/bitcoin-atm-...
Warning sheets will do nothing.
Because at the end of the day the scammer is going to convince your grandma to go to the bank, withdraw the entirety of her savings and send them to the scammer in an envelope.
Any technical restrictions therefore only harm our personal freedoms and don't actually protect those who are vulnerable because those people's problems aren't technical in nature.
Those of us with elderly parents and piblings (aunts/uncles).