In my opinion, the boundaries between exploit and scam are clearly drawn. One must first look at what the two words actually mean:
An
exploit (from the English verb to exploit, meaning "to use something to one’s own advantage") is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic (usually computerized)
Source"Scam" is defined as follows:
A confidence trick [also called scam] is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, and greed.
SourceSo with exploits I am dependent on
someone else having made a mistake which I can now exploit. However, you had absolutely no influence on the fact that the error is also built in. This is different with a scam attack, where
I try to get my victim to make a mistake, so I deliberately deceive him.
What the two have in common, however, is deliberately fraudulent behaviour. As an exploit user or a scamer, I am 100% aware that I am doing something wrong and that I am gaining an advantage in the wrong way. Someone who buys a watch set at $10 on Amazon that actually costs $1000 knows this just as well as someone who searches for victims of a scam attack in Telegram.