"It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams

Jake Chanenson; Tara Matthews; Sunny Consolvo; Patrick Gage Kelley; Jessica McClearn; Sarah Meiklejohn; Abhishek Roy; Renee Shelby; Kurt Thomas; Amelia Hassoun

arXiv · 2604.06218

"It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams

Jake Chanenson·Tara Matthews·Sunny Consolvo·Patrick Gage Kelley·Jessica McClearn·Sarah Meiklejohn·Abhishek Roy·Renee Shelby·Kurt Thomas·Amelia Hassoun

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Abstract

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.

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Jake Chanenson, Tara Matthews, Sunny Consolvo, Patrick Gage Kelley, Jessica McClearn, Sarah Meiklejohn, Abhishek Roy, Renee Shelby, Kurt Thomas, Amelia Hassoun. 2026-03-20. "It didn't feel right but I needed a job so desperately": Understanding People's Emotions & Help Needs During Financial Scams. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06218

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