You weren’t scammed or lost your bitcoin because you didn’t have a hardware wallet instead you lost them due to the fact that you were not careful with your private keys. There are many users here that don’t own a hardware wallet or even know how to operate one yet they have never complained of being compromised.

Things like knowing how to create an airgapped wallet, not exposing your private key to any software that's connected to the internet, not downloading software or files from an unknown source, not verifying software before installing it (even if it's from the original source), and randomly clicking on links are all examples of risky behaviour. It's far better to learn them than merely going for hardware wallet alone, however you might have a hardware wallet and still get hacked if you don't know how to properly safeguard your system.