Scams of all sorts have grown more frequent in recent years — maybe even more so in this last year, judging by what we hear from readers and loved ones, and what we see come into our own phones and email.

Friday’s Enterprise contained an in-depth report by Aaron Cerbone about unemployment fraud, which has exploded this past year since the COVID-19 pandemic began, putting millions of Americans out of work. The federal and state governments helped those people by adding to their unemployment checks by quite a lot. Unintentionally, however, that sweetened the pot for scammers, and it also overwhelmed government workers tasked with weeding out unemployment fraud. It made this particular type of crime easier and more lucrative — which made it more prevalent.

New York State Police Troop B reports a huge increase in unemployment fraud just in the last few weeks.

As we all know, this is far from the only type of scam that is omnipresent these days. Instead of pillaging the taxpayers through the government, many criminals target innocent people directly.

Sadly, we know people who have fallen victim to such scams and lost a lot of money — and dignity, and emotional stability. Those people are unlikely to share their stories because it is so embarrassing and traumatic, but we can assure you it is an awful thing to go through.

But money and dignity are little compared to what happened in Potsdam. A week-and-a-half ago, a 15-year-old young man committed suicide after being blackmailed by someone he had met on Facebook, someone who turned out to be not who he thought they were. The scammer convinced the young man to share personal photos and then threatened to share them with others unless he paid $3,500 — which, of course, he didn’t have.

“He wasn’t prepared for that kind of pressure,” his mother told the Watertown Daily Times. “This came down to, really, a split second of madness in a young brain that couldn’t process his decision.”

Whoever did this has blood on their hands. The young man’s father said this seems more like a murder than a suicide. It certainly seems like manslaughter at least.

The family told the Times that 15 other teens received friend requests from the same Facebook user. We’re sure it’s a lot more than that, worldwide. This family is unusually open about this. Most keep it secret. Who knows how many others are in anguish over this?

Even though most of these fraudsters and extortionists are overseas, they threaten North Country residents more often than local crooks do. They are constantly reaching into our lives to try to steal from us: by phone, by email or by trying to hack into our computers — even into our hospitals. The University of Vermont, St. Lawrence and Samaritan (Watertown) health networks have all been reduced to paper record-keeping for periods of time due to hacking.

We take it for granted these days, but this is a huge crime wave.

Think about it: Living here in the Adirondacks, how many times in the last year did you have to fend off robbers or burglars in person? Yet how many times did you get a caller claiming to be from the Social Security Administration, IRS, power company, car warrantee holder or police? If you’re like most of us, you’ve lost count of the latter but can’t remember the last time someone tried to rob you physicially.

Then add in all the phishing emails you’ve received. Think about how many are from people you know, which means their email had already been hacked. Maybe your email has been hacked, too, and the crook used your address book to try to rob everyone you know.

Most of us have gotten better at spotting scammers’ tricks, but their schemes evolve, making them harder to detect.

Police are not really equipped to deal with it — yet. But they can be. Just as policing evolved in the past to effectively reduce drunk driving, it can evolve to reduce scams.

There isn’t much police can do offensively, since most scammers are foreign, but they can play defense — or rather, help people defend themselves. Trooper Jennifer Fleishman, spokesperson for Troop B, told us public education is the best way to fight these crimes. “We need to help people out there learn to protect themselves, and we can teach what to look out for,” she said.

We agree, and we want to help.

This is an emerging field of policing in which the public information officer, rather than the patrol cop or investigator, plays a leading role. We are asking police to provide regular updates on social media and to the media — we would publish them — letting people know what scams they’re hearing about locally and what to look out for. Seeing such warnings on a regular basis would harden people against scammers’ attempts. It would also give police another way to use the scam reports they constantly receive. Right now, we imagine, they probably feel there is little they can do about these.

The point is to move from helplessness to helpfulness.