Loss Stories

Participant 1: Female, Age 38, Some college but no degree (11:29)

I used youtube shorts to escape from my daily life, and I ended up messing up my financial goals in life, Now i block the app and now I am doing much better for it,
I used social media to connect with other parents. Now I had seen their inner thoughts, I did not want to talk to them anymore, It is awkward because they try to make small talk with me.
My daughter got into youtube and started repeating things she said on youtube. The school called CPS on me.

Participant 2: Female, Age 52, Some college but no degree (16:44)

Participant matched this with Replaced Device/OS, Mental Health Using cell phones daily has cause me to lose some of my vision from stareing at the screens to long daily. I have constant headaches from looking at the screen.I feel like radiation is entering my body from the cell phone
Participant matched this with Replaced Device/OS, Mental Health Head phones. Using head phone have cause me to have some hearing loss. I’m not sure if te because some volume have been louder than others or what. So I try not to use headphones much these days.
Participant matched this with Breached Social, Mental Health I recently had a ex ray and the machine caused v me to have a reaction to it, that caused me to itch and have a hard time breathing,

Participant 3: Male, Age 30, Bachelor's degree in college (4-5 year) (12:15)

Participant matched this with Breached Financial, Broken Promise The most harm I have experienced is with credit card scam. My credit card number was somehow breached and they were able to spend my money. I had to call the bank to resort this issue but they weren't able to recover it all.
Participant matched this with Breached Account, Locked Account, Mental Health As a child, I used to play a game called Soldier Front. My first instance of a scam was when someone offered to trade Soldier front accounts. After I gave them my account details, they changed the email and never gave me their account.
My sister fell for a scammer using text messages to fraud her debit card. They somehow got her card and contact details and texted her pretending a huge transaction was being done. They asked her to confirm or deny. After she denied, they asked her to confirm her pin and she gave it to them. They were able to buy some stuff with it and she was at a loss.

Participant 4: Female, Age 31, Doctoral degree (22:33)

Participant matched this with Broken Promise, Mental Health I often follow online maps to get where I need to go and get entirely lost without them. One time when my internet went out along a drive, my maps loaded incorrectly in an area and caused me to drive the wrong way getting onto a freeway. Luckily we were not harmed and there was very little traffic so early in the morning but this technology hiccup could have seriously injured or even have gotten us killed.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise, Abuse, Mental Health The second most harmful would have been a translation error while I was at work. we were conversing with French clients and my French is very limited. Our company was trying to make a good impression and be able to set up new business accounts with them. My translator app incorrectly translated a term I was trying to say into something very offensive. Based off of the look on the clients face I realized there must have been an error and quickly told them through the translator that there must have been an issue in translation and apologized. Being now annoyed with having to use the translator app, the client left the conversation with me to talk to one of their french coworkers and removed further opportunity for me to build business with them.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise The third most would have to be related to a payment system I needed to use for school. It would not let my payments go through and the school would have me make more payments to try and get it to go through. Then only one went through and all of the other payments got hit with return fees. I ended up owing $600+ in fees because of this faulty payment system.

Participant 5: Male, Age 44, Some college but no degree (19:53)

Participant matched this with Broken Promise, Mental Health I am a recording engineer and I use desktop Mac computers in my studio to record artists and singers. One day a few years ago, I was recording a 5 pc rock band over the course of 12 hours. We had recorded the basic tracks for about 8 songs and at the end of the day I was noticing that my computer was running very slowly. I was unable to save the las song of the session in the software I was using and had to restart the computer to fix the issue. Not sure exactly what happened but after restart, all the work we had done for the day was gone, unrecoverable. We had spent all day recording at significant expense to me and the band - they were so frustrated they asked for their money back ($1250) and this caused damage to my reputation for at least a year. So not only did it harm me financially but socially it was not great as well.
Participant matched this with Mental Health I did not realize that the temperature gauge in my 1996 Chevy Lumina was not working and I was not being notified of a problem with my engine, low oil, and engine overheating which lead to the catastrophic failure of the car while I was driving home from work on the highway one day. I was driving down the highway and my engine make a huge thump/crack sound and I immediately lost power. The engine was unsalvageable.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise, Mental Health I was keeping a backup of very important file related to my business on a WD external portable drive. I had never had issues with these drives in the past but apparently unknown to me there was a bad batch of motherboard control hardware on a large batch of these portable hard drives and in 2012 I lost a significant part of my business archive of work due to this failure. In my line of work it is not uncommon for clients to come back to me years later requesting access to sessions we worked on together, but now if a client from 2005 - 2012 comes to me for a mix recall, I will not have any of the files. This has lead me to create a process where I have the files in 3 places at all time (two physical and one in the “cloud”)

Participant 6: Female, Age 41, High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED) (17:22)

I have not had any very harmful loss due to technology
Participant matched this with Breached Financial, Locked Financial, Breached Passwords, Locked Passwords, Replaced Device/OS, Broken Promise Bank account tried to be hacked by internet users.
Participant matched this with Breached Account, Breached Social, Locked Social, Abuse, Mental Health Social problems due to rude people on the internet

Participant 7: Male, Age 41, Bachelor's degree in college (4-5 year) (26:46)

The most significant that I can remember was cell phone related. I was traveling and visited the Dominican Republic and decided to rent a car to drive to my destination when I arrived. I checked Google Maps and it had me driving about 2 hours through some mountains to get to my Airbnb from the airport. About an hour into the drive, my cellphone service went out and I was lost in the mountains in DR for about 3 hours.
The second loss was with an Samsung refrigerator. The refrigerator had a locking mechanism that I could use to keep my kids out of the fridge when I didn't want them in it. One day, the refrigerator seemingly locked itself. I tried and tried to pry it open or push the button on the panel to unlock it but it wouldn't work. I essentially had to break it to open it and sold it to a local repairman and bought another refrigerator.
The third was a long time ago when I worked at Lowes Department store. I was a loader at the time and my job was to load heavy items into vehicles and do odds and ends jobs for various departments in the store. One day, I was putting a heavy item onto the top shelf with a crane operator that we called ""big joe"". It would allow enough room for an occupant and heavy items at the same time. I was using to put up a big box, so I lifted my probably 50 or so feet into the air on the platform and pushed the box onto the top shelf. After doing that, I hit the button to let myself down. It would not respond. I kept pushing the button to avail and panicked. It was closing time, so no one was around to help me out and I didn't know what to do. Maybe 10 mins later, someone finally saw and heard me suspended in the air and came and pushed the button to released the air and let me down. After that, no one could use big joe alone, it had to be a 2 man operation.

Participant 8: Non-binary / third gender, Age 36, Associate degree in college (2-year) (26:51)

Participant matched this with Broken Promise I rely heavily on my phone as a digital alarm clock. At one point, my phone decided to restart itself for updates, but never turned back on. As a result I was late to a college final and turned away from it. I ended up failing a very essential course.
Microtransactions within mobile games are often far too easy to accidentally purchase if you have your card at all linked to your google play account. At one point in time I fell asleep while playing a mobile game. In my sleep I apparently purchased over $100 in microtransactions due to misregistered contact with the phone screen, which the game kept on by overriding screen sleep time settings with its own preferences. Although I immediately disputed these purchases with the mobile game in the morning they refused to take action or refund/roll back these purchases, despite the accidentally purchased items having not been used. I was unable to recover the lost $100 and I now no longer play any mobile game with micro transactions.
A computer game I still currently play continuously utilizes FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) mechanics to keep up player engagement. Although I acknowledge my personal fault for falling for/being manipulated by the predatory mechanics of the game's FOMO activities, I continue to engage in them, often experiencing stress, anxiety, and a loss of sense of time over my need to acquire the items offered by the limited time FOMO events. I am perfectly capable of not doing these things, and after the fact I acknowledge that, but it feels as if this game in particular turns gaming into an addiction. I know it is my own fault for engaging, but in the moment it is like an addiction I can not quit even though I know I should. I have strained relationships or misplaced priorities over this game's limited time events due to feeling that I 'can't' miss them or I will miss out on important game rewards.

Participant 9: Male, Age 32, High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED) (31:53)

Participant matched this with Breached Social, Breached Passwords, Locked Passwords My facebook account was hacked and I was impersonated. My details were used to trick my family and friends to take money from them.
Participant matched this with Mental Health I was scammed and defrauded one time I tried buying a mobile phone online. Apparently, the page was fake. And they did not have a physical shop as they claimed. They used pictures of another person's shop to display as their own.
Participant matched this with Abuse I see random pornographic images and videos on my Facebook timeline I did not sign for. These pornographic sites tag me in disturbing images and videos which appear on my timeline as if i consented to it.

Participant 10: Female, Age 53, Associate degree in college (2-year) (36:20)

The first would definitely be my eyesight. After years of staring at a cell phone screen for my line of work, my eyes have adjusted to the typical distance a phone is while looking at it, but my vision outside of this range has suffered. Visual life beyond the cell phone is not as sharp and vivid.
Participant matched this with Mental Health I feel that the reliance in technology has affected personal interactions because most people are buried in their screens, and it has created barriers for intimate connection. I have done grocery delivery via a popular app, and the algorithm increasingly takes advantage of the workforce with slave wages and minimal interaction. Because the company is shielded behind an app rather than personal connection with its workers, the ones who actually do the work go unappreciated. Accountability and integrity are huge problem with an app based company.
I feel that technology has also dumbed-down society, and encourages laziness. When everything is available at our fingertips, we lose sight of solid work ethic that built society, and hence it becomes a community of self entitled individuals. People would rather throw money at something, then to have an equitable exchange of value. I am working with a couple people who are getting back to private equity exchanges, but it's been difficult because a majority of the world still prefers to avoid human interaction in lieu of convenience.

Participant 11: Female, Age 35, Some college but no degree (18:06)

Participant matched this with Locked Device, Breached Social, Breached Financial, Abuse, Lost Photos, Mental Health Many years ago someone hacked my Facebook page and changed all of my information and picture to look like a drug dealer.
Participant matched this with Locked Account, Locked Social, Replaced Device/OS, Lost Emails, Mental Health The second most harmful loss I have experienced was when I was in an abusive relationship and my ex stole and broke my phone that was not backed up. I lost all of my pictures, contacts and access to a lot of services.
Participant matched this with Locked Financial, Mental Health The third most harmful technology related harm or loss I have experienced was after I checked out online with my debit card. Somehow, that information was not secure and my debit card number was stolen and attempted to be used for outrageous amounts.

Participant 12: Male, Age 32, Bachelor's degree in college (4-5 year) (23:31)

Participant matched this with Mental Health At the beginning of learning about investing I used the Robinhood app to buy small amounts of stock, thinking that I could build a little nest egg over the long term. After earning some money through the shares I held, I saw that options trading was available to me and the app allowed margin trading. I only knew the basics of options and thought that the market could only go up, this was in 2019. I ended up gambling and not investing, losing everything I had put into the account, plus almost a thousand in margin. My budget was already tight, working a second job while my wife was in graduate school. This mistake put us in a tough position and I had to work extra hours to recuperate. The app allowed me to make financial decisions that I was not ready for with minimal safeguards in place.
Participant matched this with Locked Device, Lost Photos I use a two factor authentication service to log into my work laptop. During a weekend at a lake house, I set my phone in the grass while enjoying time on the water. I mistakenly didnt think about the sun beating down on the screen of the phone which essentially cooked the device and it wouldn't turn on. I was unable to get to a phone store until the following day which caused me to miss an entire day of work while I scrambled to get reorganized and validated through the company's IT department.
When I first got my second dog, we were trying to crate train her while away at work. She ended up being an escape artist and got herself out of the cage. While she was out of the cage, she destroyed a pair of expensive blue tooth headphones that I used frequently for work and working out. I had to spend an additional $200 to replace the ones that were destroyed.

Participant 13: Prefer not to say, Age 31, Master's degree (10:37)

Participant matched this with Mental Health Generally being addicted to my phone. Harms my relationships with others.
Data breach with a health company.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise Technology failing during church service

Participant 14: Male, Age 56, Professional degree (JD, MD) (13:32)

Participant matched this with Mental Health I was in the middle of a trade with heavy size and the computer froze up and I was trying to close out some of the position because the FOMC announcement was coming up. By the time I CNTL+ALT+DEL and rebooted it, the market had moved against me by a considerable margin.
Participant matched this with Lost Photos, Mental Health I was on Facegram for a while and it was not good for my mental health. I deleted it after a few months and never looked back. That was 15 years ago.
The mobile phone makes it hard to disconnect. Clients expect you to pick up or reply as soon as you get the message. There is no more down time.

Participant 15: Female, Age 20, Less than high school degree (16:56)

Participant matched this with Mental Health One of the most harmful technology-related losses I've experienced is the deterioration of my family relationships due to overreliance on screens, we barely interact much anymore since everyone is just watching streaming. Our dinners, which used to be lively and full of conversation about something mundane, became just my mom scrolling through tik Tok and ignoring me whenever I tried talking to her.
Participant matched this with Lost Emails Another significant harm I've experienced due to technology was the loss of privacy and security when my personal information was compromised in a data breach. I got caught up in a data breach for a gaming company and my data got sold, someone tried repeatedly getting into my email and it was infuriating since the company wasn't really helping at all.
My dad got replaced by an automatic system at his work so he was out of a job for more than 2 weeks since nobody would hire him at the time. We suffered a lot and then he started drinking heavily because of it, can't help but wonder if I'd be in a better position if they didn't screw him out a job.

Participant 16: Male, Age 32, Master's degree (26:26)

Participant matched this with Breached Financial I was part of the Sony security leak which occurred around the year 2012, where users had their credit card information leaked. I wasn't aware of the leak until I tried to use my debit card and it was declined due to insufficient funds. Eventually, the stolen money was returned to the balance on my account and I received a new card.
I was over-reliant on my phone reminding me of an important task: a scheduled meeting with members of the governing board. Though the phone gave me a background notification, it never gave an audible notification or interrupted what I was doing to remind me, it simply blended into the rest of the notifications on my phone. This caused embarrassment as well as missed opportunity to convey needed information to the board.
I was writing a final exam for my English 102 class in my first year of college, and I hadn’t saved it in several hours, but as I was finishing up the editing process, Microsoft Word crashed and I lost ~4 hours of work.

Participant 17: Female, Age 43, High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED) (31:07)

Participant matched this with Mental Health I think I was addicted to World of Warcraft years ago. when the Burning Crusade came out I was so enmeshed into it I let a lot of real life things go. I had pet birds and I literally forgot to feed them for a few days and they died. I would wake up and start gaming and game all day and into the night where I would pass out at my computer. I still feel terrible talking about this and it happened almost 20 years ago. it is one of the worst things I did in my life and I am so ashamed of it that I lied about what happened and now that I am older I wont let my kids have pet birds because of the trauma.
Participant matched this with Abuse, Mental Health I have a teen daughter and some of the other girls at her school made memes about her and even some fake pictures of her to spread around. the school would do nothing about it because they said they didnt know who started it and the police told me they are powerless about those situations since they were faked pictures. it has caused a lot of pain in my house and I feel so bad for her that people would do this. one of the worst things is that when I tried to bring this up at a school board meeting one of the mothers of a girl that was involved literally called me a Karen and gaslit me about the whole thing. it made the situation even worse.
Participant matched this with Breached Financial, Locked Financial a couple of years ago my bank account was hacked and cleared out. it was a pain. I had to spend a lot of time to prove that I am really me (to the bank) and that I wasnt in another state making purchases at multiple stores while I was at work. they treated me like I was the criminal trying to scam them! it took over a month to get everything sorted but it was extremely frustrating and it wasted a lot of my time. it really made me mad and it still does that the fake debit card they used had a ""broken"" strip so people had to manually enter it. those stores never checked ID for that. it seems like it would have been common sense to do that to me.

Participant 18: Male, Age 44, High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED) (30:47)

I have developed carpal tunnel syndrome and some eye damage due to lighting
Participant matched this with Breached Financial, Mental Health i have developed some anxiety
Participant matched this with Abuse I have developed some mental distress dealing with people on social media

Participant 19: Male, Age 28, Master's degree (14:00)

Participant matched this with Breached Social, Locked Social, Breached Financial, Broken Promise, Lost Photos, Lost Emails, Mental Health When my data was used to steal my identity and people were using my password and credentials to do criminal activities
When a battery pack in my EV car disconnected and I lossed sudden power in my car and I almost got into a wreck going down a hill
When a battery pack exploded on my backpack and almost started a fire

Participant 20: Male, Age 47, Bachelor's degree in college (4-5 year) (14:35)

Participant matched this with Breached Financial I had my debit card information stolen on a golf course by a beverage cart employee. I noticed I had charges for a hotel in Paris and some other charges outside the country. I had to call and get my card cancelled and fortunately my money was reimbursed. I called the golf course and that employee apparently left the job.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise A computer that I had bought, after a couple years quit working. It wasn't the biggest deal in the world but it was annoying and I had to buy another one.
My credit union was hacked by some computer hacker and the online banking was down for over a week. As far as I know, none of personal data was compromised and I didn't lose any money but it was frustrating not to be able to handle banking needs online and I had to go and wait in long lines to get services done.

Participant 21: Female, Age 42, Associate degree in college (2-year) (13:38)

Once a long time ago I took my car to be service and it was required that I pay a fee to have an electronic diagnostic completed. The diagnostic made an error determining what the problem was with my vehicle and I paid for work that never needed to be completed. I had to argue with the manager of the station for them to correct the problem.
Once when I was dealing with Ebay, an unauthorized charge was made using my pay pal account. When I called Ebay, they said they couldn't do anything about it and when I contacted PayPal they said the same thing. It was a hassle that took a long time to resolve.
Participant matched this with Lost Photos Once, several years ago, when I purchased a new phone and needed to transfer my data from the old phone to the new phone the transfer capability's did not work as intended. As a result, I lost a lot of pictures and phone numbers that I did NOT want to lose.

Participant 22: Male, Age 29, High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED) (18:37)

Participant matched this with Mental Health well social media was the key to the harm because it allows people to talk recklessly and it started a back and forth fight with a previous friend i had. the fact you can hide behind a computer gives people the ability to feel untouchable.
Participant matched this with Mental Health second most harmful situation would be getting addicted to the game runescape. although it doesnt cause physical harm it did develop into a mental addiction. all i cared about was playing the game and my grades dropped because of it.
Participant matched this with Mental Health constantly seeing negative news article or posts by people on social media.

Participant 23: Male, Age 67, Some college but no degree (23:03)

Participant matched this with Lost Photos, Mental Health We get severe storms here. Watching the weather is very important. We stream so the internet connection is very important. The connection was lost and then so were we. we did not know whether to shelter in place or not.
Participant matched this with Locked Device, Broken Promise, Mental Health Right in the middle of a doctors visit on the web, our router decides it is going to act up. No doctor no more. We had to reset the router and then all the internet settings to get connected again and then wait for another tele-doc appointment.
Participant matched this with Locked Financial, Abuse, Mental Health We were paying a bill at the dentist office ($4500) with our debit card. Well it was declined and caused us great embarrassment. We had to drive to the bank, withdraw cash and then drive back to the dentist office.

Participant 24: Male, Age 25, Some college but no degree (29:02)

The worst one for me was my computer breaking down and being unable to turn on. This prevented me from doing my schoolwork and halted my academics.
Participant matched this with Lost Photos My phone being lost was pretty harmful to me since I was not able to back up the pictures from that phone and so I lost so many pictures and videos that I can never get back.
My television fell and completely broke the screen. This made me have to buy a new television since I had no other at the time that was of similar quality.

Participant 25: Male, Age 31, Some college but no degree (35:04)

Participant matched this with Lost Photos, Mental Health When my computer I depended on stopped working
My laptop stopped working
Participant matched this with Mental Health My Xbox wouldn't come on

Participant 26: Male, Age 43, Bachelor's degree in college (4-5 year) (32:34)

Participant matched this with Broken Promise There was a day I went for grocery shopping. i had picked the items on my list but couldn't make payment because my card was malfunction at the point. Hence, I had to drop the items because my card was the only payment option available then.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise I experienced an internet downtime during an important virtual meeting with the top staffs of the organization I was working with. I was super frustrated. It took a while before it was restored.
Participant matched this with Breached Account, Locked Account, Broken Promise, Mental Health I remember I was a victim of cybercrime few years ago. The password to one of my accounts was hacked and personal information was accessed

Participant 27: Female, Age 25, High school graduate (high school diploma or equivalent including GED) (18:44)

Participant matched this with Breached Account, Breached Social, Broken Promise, Lost Photos One time I had one of my social media accounts compromised. Someone had gained unauthorized access to my account and locked me out of my own account. I had no way of getting back into my account. They changed my whole account and erased all of my information and used my account as their own. I lost all my followers and media I had posted on it previously. I was using this account fairly frequently too.
Participant matched this with Abuse, Mental Health One time I was harassed by an unknown social media user. They sent me endless threatening messages and images to my instant messages. I experienced psychological and emotional harm due to the content they had repeatedly sent to me during this time. I had to take a break from social media following their harassment of me. This was also on an account I used frequently.
Participant matched this with Broken Promise, Mental Health One time I was relying on my old laptop to help me complete a critical assignment that was due for one of my classes that night. The computer ended up freezing, crashing and shutting down. I lost all of my work and was unable to submit my assignment and get the credit I so desperately needed for my class. I experience severe psychological and emotional harm because of my dependence on this piece of technology to help me complete my assignment properly.

Participant 28: Female, Age 40, Bachelor's degree in college (4-5 year) (40:36)

Participant matched this with Broken Promise My research associates and I had one dedicated computer that could not be connected to the network at the location because of security reasons. Alot of data was stored on this laptop over time. We kept intending to back it up with an external harddrive but never really got around to it. This persisted for several months, until the amount of data stored in this file was decently large. Then one day, a new research assistant accidentally copied over the file. All our data was lost. It took us weeks to reenter all the information, in a more secure manner this time. However, some of the data was irreplaceable. It had a significant impact on several of our projects and they had to be restarted in order to have the correct data to analysize.
Participant matched this with Breached Device Our databases were compromised by an outside threat. The database contained information that was covered under HIPPA. We spent a week contacting the individuals to let them know that their information may have been breached. We also had to increase of digital security after the breach.
Participant matched this with Breached Passwords, Abuse, Lost Emails All my passwords were compromised by a disgruntled employee. The IT employee left on unfriendly terms and wanted to punish the management. He was able to gain access to several files and delete important information. Nothing was lost, but it took a considerable amount of time and effort to create them again, and address the security issues. It was very frustrating time.

Participant 29: Female, Age 36, Associate degree in college (2-year) (48:52)

the most harmful tech-related harm or loss I've experienced happhened 3 years ago. I'd just gotten my laptop brand new to begin a side hustle online. I was on several platforms similar to Prolific, when I accepted to participate in a study that paid better than most studies. It required me to download a broser extension and it turned out to be a malicious extension that really did a number on my computer, encypting the hard drive then locking me out, ultimately. I had to pay $230 to get the storage partitioned and have a professional reinstall Windows, from a USB drive on my device to use the 'clean' section on it.
The community college I attended used our SSNs as our student ID numbers at the time I was attending. A couple years after graduating, I received a letter in the mail that notified me that my name, DOB, and SSN had been accidentally emailed to a about 2000 other students. It wasn't exclusively my details, but a list of about 300 students' details. I haven't incurred a direct loss yet, but I do believe thaIt the random notifications I got later on, that someone had made a credit inquiry with my details, was related to this incident.
Participant matched this with Breached Device, Mental Health My ex and I had a relatively solid relationship at first, but due to our own self esteem issues and insecurities, we let our paranoias about each other having social media or the ability to easily cheat completely destroy our relationship.