The paradox here is the same one patio11 discussed in "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero", on the front page yesterday [0]. The more non-tech people have an email address, the more we have to prevent fraudulent email, and the harder it becomes to run your own email address.
The original email users were much more savvy and needed less protecting against fraud. Now my grandma has an email, and if we're not careful she ends up on the phone with "Microsoft customer support" giving them full access to her computer. Spam filters aren't just a question of irritation anymore, people's life savings are at risk.
I actually would rephrase it as there weren’t enough users with money to make using email a worthwhile scam medium.
Email is low trust and almost any user is susceptible to being scammed, because there aren’t good trust markers in emails, and companies use it in ways that make it indistinguishable from spam.
I think both are true. The kinds of scams my grandparents (and even parents) fall for are trivially recognizable as scams to me. It takes more work to defraud someone who knows more about the way thing are supposed to work.
But yes, it's definitely still possible for anyone to fall for more sophisticated scams, and there being more money to be had is a huge part of it. Either way the effect is the same: more protection is necessary than was before.
The original email users were much more savvy and needed less protecting against fraud. Now my grandma has an email, and if we're not careful she ends up on the phone with "Microsoft customer support" giving them full access to her computer. Spam filters aren't just a question of irritation anymore, people's life savings are at risk.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32701913