A scammer is an individual whose goal is to get victims to provide them with sensitive information by tricking them with social engineering techniques. Social engineering is a psychological manipulation tactic often used by scammers to get others to reveal private information like login credentials, Social Security numbers and credit card information. When scammers use social engineering techniques, they pretend to be someone the victim knows like a family member or company the victim has services with. Scammers may also pose as government agencies like the IRS.
Here are some of the red flags you should be aware of to help you identify scammers.
Any time you receive an email, text message or phone call that asks you to provide personal information, it should be seen as an immediate red flag. Reputable companies and government agencies will never ask you to provide them with personal information unsolicited. Furthermore, they should never ask you to provide them with financial information through emails or text messages, especially if you were not the one who initiated contact. If you receive any sort of communication claiming to be a friend, family member or coworker, it’s worth taking the extra steps to contact them directly through another form of communication to confirm it’s them. As the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increased, scammers are using this technology in a number of ways, including to spoof phone numbers to make it seem as though their calls are coming from someone you know. Scammers have also started using AI to impersonate the voices of friends and family members, so you must be extra vigilant about providing personal information over the phone.
Oftentimes, scammers will try to entice victims into providing them with sensitive information by sending offers that seem too good to be true. Some common offers that scammers might entice victims with include job offers with a higher-than-average salary or winning a paid vacation, gift or money – even though they didn’t enter a giveaway for it. If you receive an email, text message or phone call with a too-good-to-be-true offer, the offer is most likely not true and you should not interact with it. Interacting with the contents of an email or message, such as clicking on a link or attachment, can lead to your device becoming infected with malware. When malware is installed on your device it can do things like spy on you and track your keystrokes to determine sensitive information like your login credentials and credit card numbers.
When carrying out scam attempts, scammers will display a sense of urgency so the victim provides them with their information before they have the opportunity to second-guess themselves. For example, if a scammer is pretending to be the IRS, they may say something along the lines of, “Pay now or you’ll be arrested.” Because the scammer has displayed a sense of urgency and also threatened the victim that they’ll be arrested, the victim is more likely to pay them out of fear. Don’t be so quick to provide anyone with your personal information through emails, phone calls or text messages. Ask questions, and if you feel uneasy, don’t go through with what they’re telling you to do.
Getting a random phone call from someone claiming to be from a company or any government agency should come as an immediate red flag to you that they’re a scammer. Companies will never contact you through a phone call unsolicited and no government agency will ever contact you through a phone call either.
Emails that claim to be from companies you have accounts with and contain grammatical or spelling errors should be a dead giveaway that the email is from a scammer. Before companies send emails, they go through multiple reviews to ensure that they are grammatically correct and don’t have spelling mistakes. If the email contains any errors, you should avoid clicking on anything in the email