by David Kubicek
I have written many articles on fraud and cybersecurity for the Midlands Business Journal over past 20 years. In researching these stories I picked the brains of lots of fraud prevention experts. Here’s a rundown of how you can recognize scams.
Scammers are like cockroaches–when you see one on the kitchen floor, you can be sure that there’s a nest of them in the wall. Scammers will take advantage of any situation to trick people into sending them money. When COVID-19 first hit, scammers began hawking phony cures.
The Credit Card Scam
Years ago, a source told me about his client who started seeing suspicious charges on her credit card bill after she returned from a Florida vacation. Upon investigating, she learned that a waiter had taken her card to pay for her meal and had brought back a card that looked like hers, while he kept her card for his own use. Ever since then, whenever my card leaves my sight, I look at it when the server returns it–I check that it’s my bank, that my name is on it, and that my signature is on the back.
Email Swindles
Beware of phishing emails. I get at least one and sometimes several of them each day. They bear logos of legitimate companies like PayPal, Netflix, and Amazon. Usually they will say something like “Your account has been inactivated until you update your information,” and then they will generously provide a link for you to click on where they will either ask you to input credit card information, or just the act of clicking the link will allow them to access your computer.
Usually, these are easy to spot. One time, while checking my email with my phone, I found a notice from Netflix that they had deactivated my account because their attempt to collect my payment had failed. Setting aside the fact that I make Netflix payments by auto withdrawal and it was the wrong time of month for them to be taking money, I was standing in front of my TV at the time so I turned it on and accessed my supposedly deactivated account.
Recognizing Email Scams
An easy way to identify a phishing email is to hover your cursor over it, and the address from whence it came will be displayed. If an email that purports to be from PayPal, for instance, was sent from a long address made up of random characters, numbers, and symbols, it is most likely phony. Occasionally, the legit company’s name may appear somewhere in that mess, but not always. An actual message from PayPal (or most legitimate companies) would be very simple, and would end in something like @PayPal.com.
If you have a few extra minutes , you may want to go to your account in question, just to make sure that everything is hunky-dory, but DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK THEY SEND YOU. Access your account the way you normally do, such as typing it into the browser bar.
The “You’ve Been Charged” Scam
Another popular phishing email tells potential marks that a certain amount of money will be charged to their bank account within 48 hours, and if they want to cancel it, here’s a link. Various emails have informed me that anywhere from $30 to over $6,000 was set to be withdrawn from my credit card or bank account (they usually aren’t too specific about which financial account). I delete them all, and I have yet to be charged a penny.
These are usually fairly easy to spot. If you haven’t set up an account with the company, haven’t ordered anything from them, and don’t have your credit card listed with them, they are phony. The problem is when scammers pretend to be from a legitimate company, such as Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and their victim is actually doing business with that firm and thinks the communication is legitimate.
Keep a Firm Grasp of Your Financial Information
If you keep a good watch over your personal financial information, scammers should not be able to get ahold of it. Banks also are good about detecting fraud. They have software that look for patterns, and if it notes things that don’t fit a customer’s pattern–such as an exceedingly large expense, or charges in a geographical area where the customer usually doesn’t spend money–the bank will check with the customer before releasing the funds (I actually wrote an MBJ story about how banks detect fraud).
Once I went to North Carolina without telling my bank, and when I tried to use my debit card in that state, it was declined. When I called my bank they said that North Carolina was flagged as an area of high fraudulent activity, so they locked my card. Once I properly identified myself to the bank and told them I was traveling in North Carolina, they unlocked my card.
Also, be careful about displaying your credit card number and ATM pin in public. I block the keyboard with my body when entering my pin, and in restaurants where the server is the cashier, I put my card under the receipt with just the end showing and receipt covering the number so no roving scammer can snap a picture of it.
A Warrant for Your Arrest
I occasionally get a call informing me that the IRS has issued a warrant for my arrest, but if I pay them a certain amount of money, they will make it go away. There are many things wrong with this scenario:
- If a warrant is issued for your arrest, they don’t call and warn you so you can run–the first you’ll hear about it is when the police come pounding on your door.
- If they were inclined to announce it, it would be via a letter or a process server (although that’s usually if you’re summoned to court; an arrest warrant would be served by the cops pounding on your door). And they certainly wouldn’t inform you by robocall!
- If an arrest warrant has been issued, it’s probably too late to pay a fee and get out of it. You would be in the system, which would mean arrest, arraignment, and bail.
Anyway, I’ve been receiving these calls–and ignoring them–for over a year, and the cops have yet to break down my door and drag me to jail.
Ransom Demands
One of my sources told me about a company whose system got infected by a virus, which shut down their whole network. The scammer demanded that they pay him $250,000 and he would “unfreeze” their computers. They contacted the FBI, which recommended that the company pay the blackmailer. They knew about him but had been unable to track him down; however, they considered him to be a “good” criminal, meaning that he would probably release their system if they paid him.
For that same article, I talked to a lawyer who specialized in fraud. He said that this is common–occasionally, law enforcement catches a hacker, but not very often.
I’ve had my own brush with ransomware. One email declared that the hacker had access to my computer. In fact, he was watching me RIGHT NOW (he must have been a sorcerer since I was using a desktop computer without a camera or microphone). He even provided me with one of my passwords as proof (an old password that I don’t use anymore). He demanded that I pay him $800 in bitcoin or he would spread my information all over the web. Well, I didn’t pay him, and I’ve been out to the web, and my information isn’t all over it, so I assume he was fibbing.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of scammer tricks, and every day scammers are inventing new ways to separate you from your hard-earned money. Just remember that scammers are out there, and they will target you, but if you are diligent about keeping your private information private, have a good firewall protecting your computer, are careful about who you allow to access your computer, and above all have–as Hemingway put it–your personal, well-maintained sh*t detector turned on, you should be able to avoid difficulties with grifters.
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