Cult-finding and cybersecurity have a lot in common.
Wanna learn how to avoid dangerous cults in your spiritual path? Read this.
Before I talk about similarities, here is the main difference between cult-finding and cybersecurity: when you’re dealing with hackers, you’re dealing with LITERAL theft. They steal your money and data, your tangible assets. On the other hand, religious wolves-in-sheeps-clothing steal intangible valuables from you: your well-being, autonomy, sense of trust in yourself and others, etc. Basically, one is literal and the other is more metaphoric — but both incur a lot of damage.
Please keep the above in mind as you navigate through this article.
How hackers impersonate legit websites and services.
First of all, please don’t take this article as a complete guide for cybersecurity. I am simply comparing it to something else. And in order to do so, I need to introduce the concept. I happen to know a lot about this topic, because I work with implementing and verifying safe online transaction methods for a company (among other tasks), but I won’t go on a long tangent here. If you’re curious about a more in-depth explanation of how to protect against cyberattacks, take a look at this comprehensive and user-friendly guide made available by an Irish bank. (Hover over the link to see the web address before clicking, google it on another device if you still aren’t sure. This is your first lesson in cybersecurity!)
One common theme you’ll see time and again when you learn about fraud is impersonation. In order to understand impersonation, the first thing to learn is: gone are the days when theft was done violently. Today’s thieves (and other kinds of malicious people, but I’ll stick to thieves here to keep the article short), in their vast majority, are wolves in sheep’s clothing. If you happen to interact with one of them, they may even try to persuade you that evil is always overt (like someone who recently told me manipulation “always means putting a gun to somebody’s head”), because it’s advantageous for them if you believe wolves in sheep’s clothing don’t exist, and “nice”, “love-and-light” people are always good people. Why would malicious tricksters tell on themselves? They wouldn’t. They’re not stupid.
Thieves (for example, pickpockets) are not going to put a gun to your head and say “pass me your wallet now”. Instead, they are like illusionists, they dress up as somebody friendly or trustworthy in order to sit beside you or brush against you and take advantage of you. There’s no violence, no overt threats or intimidation. You’re left feeling like you just had a very unremarkable, friendly encounter with a regular person in the subway. But when you take a second look at your valuables… Uh-oh! Gone!
The same is true for online fraud: most cases of online fraud, today, in 2024, are actually not coming from low-effort poorly-designed cheap knock-off websites full of typos that vaguely resemble something legit. Maybe this was true in 2001, but it’s no longer true now. How many people do you know who actually fell for the well-known “Nigerian prince” e-mail or big flashy “you win, click here” buttons in websites that Google marks as unsafe? My educated guess is zero. You know zero people who fell for those. We hear the stories, but never actually know a victim. We ignore these obvious traps now. We’re not stupid.
Modern fraudulent websites look exactly like the real deal, and sometimes even have a URL that on a first impression looks the same. Yes, it is true that most scammers still urge you to act fast (so you don’t have time to double-check their message), but some will play the long game and even give you real freebies at the beginning of your conversation to slowly earn your trust. When it comes to modern fraud and scams, no strategy is set in stone and there’s no fool-proof way to detect or deal with them.
This is not meant to alarm you, I’m simply bringing you the up-to-date facts. But regardless of everything I said above, fraud and scams tend to boil down to one common action: unsolicited communication. This is why every serious how-to guide on preventing these pitfalls (such as the one I linked to above) will teach you to double-check any new correspondence by calling a trusted number (not the one they provide, but the one on your phonebook) or confirming the communication in person. Beware anything that is unsolicited or that came out of the blue — REGARDLESS of how official it looks and how many authentication tests it “passes”.
This is how hacker behaviour starts to look really, really similar to what’s in our next segment:
How cult predators impersonate legit religious authorities.
When I say “cult”, maybe you think People’s Temple, Manson Family, or Heaven’s Gate. Those well-known examples are certainly cults, but they are what we can call overt cults — most people can confidently see through them by now because of the scandals.
What if I told you… The vast majority of spiritual and/or religious cults today are actually run by leaders who DON’T want to kill the cult members? Leaders who aren’t psychopaths and definitely don’t pose a physical danger to anyone… But will still cause severe damage to people’s mental health?
Would you be surprised?
Don’t be. It’s common as muck.
Modern cult leaders can be divided into 2 main categories: creative master minds and impersonators.
- Creative master minds. Here are “newage starseeds” and other narcissists with a Messiah complex who create a belief system from scratch (although, arguably, Scientology belongs here too). You might recall one particular newage Youtuber who allegedly did not discourage one of her followers from suicide (if you know, you know). Most of them, but not all, usually lure you in with clickbaits and advertise the shit out of their content. Once you’re hooked, you will soon realise that this person/group does not reference any external source other than material they authored elsewhere, perhaps under a pseudonym or two, but once you see who is behind all the pseudonyms, you can’t unsee it. (Same as hackers — they’ll lure you towards a fabricated network of fraudulent websites which look like they don’t all belong to the same gang, but in fact they do, and when you see it, you can’t unsee it). In between the lines, the message is “I am the only person/group you should listen to”. If you confront them about that, they will claim to have channeled all the knowledge they’re passing on to their followers (because I refuse to call it wisdom, but they’ll use this word — wisdom).
- Impersonators. This crowd is more specialised and probably learned with the mishaps of the people who are in the first category. Instead of creating material from scratch (although, sometimes they do; But it’s not the entirety of what they teach), they appropriate and water-down legit teachings* from real traditions. These legit teachings with real, tried-and-tested benefits, will most certainly be used as bait to lure people in. So, when you’re dealing with the impersonator kind of cult leader, you’ll notice they don’t care much for clickbait or even for advertisement, relying solely on word-of-mouth from brainwashed impressionable people (which is how I fell for this kind of scam twice — I trusted the people who invited me. I liked them. I let my guard down around them. And they either betrayed me very heartlessly, OR proved to be way dumber than I gave them credit for). I used to know a woman who appropriated Astrology in this manner, and a man who appropriated Buddhist teachings. Feel free to share your own stories in the comments (always anonymised, because these cult leaders are petty and WILL sue you).
*If you’re atheist (since this blog is atheist-friendly), by “legit”, what I’m saying is these appropriated teachings come from traditions that developed organically, over many centuries, within a community with its own cultural identity. This is in contrast to modern cult leaders, who tend to develop material over a much shorter timespan for personal gain, ruining people’s mental health. I’m not categorically affirming any religious belief is “real”, even because this can’t be affirmed — it’s always a matter of belief. I’m just differentiating authentic cultural stuff from inauthentic machinations of one or more selfish idiots.
Both “creative master minds” and “impersonators” have one hacker strategy in common: the lovebombing-to-discard pipeline. This is the big picture theme you should be on the lookout for: first, they hook you into their content (going as far as delivering real perks). Then, they slowly devalue you and act more and more domineering.
This is the very OPPOSITE of what a legit religious leader will do. For example, if you go to a Buddhist temple and join the Order, the beginning of this path will be difficult because you’ll have to adapt to the new routine, rules of the house, etc. Over time, though, it gets easier and becomes second-nature for you. There won’t be someone constantly moving the goalposts, making you feel progressively worse about yourself, or destroying your self-reliance and access to outsider information. Worst-case-scenario, if you really did not adapt, they’ll just invite you to leave (and they’ll even be super nice and help you pack/travel home safely). No emotional blackmail, no weaponised miscommunication, no smear campaign or triangulation, nothing of that sort.
Conclusion:
Don’t be thinking you “found a good teacher” just because the subject matter they teach isn’t novel or newage. Use the same logic we have for cybersecurity: just because a URL, number or e-mail address looks legit, and just because the contents are professionally made — or even, just because you got real perks without strings attached in the beginning — none of that means you’re navigating a secure place.
Yes, it’s mind-boggling. It’s deliberately intended to confuse you. The more you search for loopholes internally (within the website a hacker linked to, or within the belief system a cult leader introduced), the more “free training” you’re giving the scammers on how to improve this bubble of illusion to keep people trapped in it.
Stop looking for suspicious signs INSIDE this maze. Instead, look outside of it.
What does that mean in practice? Well… If a suspected cult leader tells you they teach [insert established religion here], interview them. “Who taught you, where and when”. If they refuse to answer or act uneasy, it’s a scammer, hands down, don’t even waste your time. If they answer, still Google the source. Phone the source. Visit physically with your own two feet if you can at all. Looks legit, but you’d never heard of it before? Ask about their own connections. Ask outsiders to confim. And on and on… DO NOT STOP until you, yourself, with your own eyes, track the whole thing down to an authority you already knew. The Dalai Lama in Tibet, for example.
Don’t just take someone’s word, because if you do, they can AND WILL manipulate you into becoming submissive to them through complex games of baiting and grooming. They’ll win at the verbal game every single time. If they weren’t eloquent, they wouldn’t be into con artistry.
The above follows the same logic of “phone a trusted number, visit the headquarters physically, etc” when you receive unsolicited correspondence (possibly from a scammer) with a call to action.
Also worth mentioning: never confront a scammer. Not even for the laughs. First of all, because they will not tell on themselves, you WILL NOT outsmart them. Forget that. Secondly, the more you keep talking, the more you feed them (if anything, precious information on how to improve their game next time).
Yes, I know… This whole investigation process is exhausting. It can be disheartening, even, especially if you’re seeking spirituality because you’re in a vulnerable place in life. But I regret to tell you, it’s necessary. You don’t want to end up in an even worse place.
Last, but not least, atheists, pay attention here: stop doing the spiritual community a disservice. No, really. I like you guys, but I’ll give you tough love whenever it’s due (and this is the entire reason why I tagged your community here). You’re doing the spiritual community a disservice every time you say platitudes like “every religion is a cult”. STOP IT. I know you have trauma with religion, but why use this trauma to contribute to the confusion and misinformation about what cults are and are not? That’s extremely selfish and unempathetic. Just because you guys don’t have spiritual beliefs, it doesn’t mean other people can’t have them. And don’t you agree that, if people want to have beliefs, it would be better and safer for them to know how to distinguish harmless groups with a belief from dangerous predators with a belief? The spiritual belief can very well be the exact same… It does not dictate ethics and character, you know.
And look… (still addressing you, atheists) I’m not even invalidating the arguments you may have against the existence of religions and spiritual belief systems as a whole. I acknowledge that, for some of you, everything is harmful. Okay. Keep believing that (no sarcasm intended). But even in that case, you have to admit that there are levels to this alleged danger. I’m here to minimise damage.
This guide, and this entire article, is provided for free so that anyone on the Internet can learn to distinguish a friend from a foe in the context of Religion and Spirituality. I don’t even care which belief system we’re talking about — it can very well be the flying spaghetti monster. Usually, traditional ones that can be tracked down to established cultures are harder to fake… But nothing is completely safe these days, as we saw above. Conversely, someone with wacky and innovative beliefs can very well be harmless (and just a bit eccentric). The key to know is all in their behaviour. Do they manipulate people? Or do they simply share their beliefs without intending to “trap” anyone anywhere?
Stay safe.
