Covid lockdowns have created the perfect storm for email scams and phone scams.
Phone Scammers Keep Stepping ahead.
People at home longer and not traveling gives phone and internet scammers a more captive audience. At first it was easy to avoid the email and phone scams. People wised up and stopped answering numbers that didn’t look familiar or answering emails that didn’t make sense. Scammers moved on and figured out how to use VoIP systems to get “virtual” numbers. By using the virtual numbers the scammers look like someone in your area. Instead of being a caller from India they are a caller from your area code. The better ones even match the first three digits with your number.
Because of services like Privacy Star that log the scammers number and block them, the scammers have started a new game. The big trick is not to answer your phone if you don’t know the number. More importantly if they hang up, don’t call back. That is how they verify your phone number and name. With this information they can spoof your number and name to call other people. Legitimate businesses are being hit hard by these scams.
And Then There Is Email
Email scams are so sophisticated that even Apple Computer is being spoofed. It used to be that you could check the address of the email sender to see if the email was legit. Not so anymore. You can get an email that is “from” support@apple.com and it can still be a scam. Worse the scammers copy real email’s and change the links in the email.
There are methods to prevent scammers from using your email address but if scammers can get around the security settings of a company like Apple, they can get around yours. If you want to protect yourself from email scammers, check out this video from our parent company the Bourquin Group.
If you want to be safe from email and phone scams, the best thing to do is ignore calls and emails that you don’t expect. Don’t call any credit card company from an email. Look them up online and call the customer service number on the website. Don’t click links in emails or answer calls. Never call back a number that hangs up according to internet expert Scott Bourquin.