Avoiding Scams: Check, Double Check, and Check Again

The 10 Most Common Types of Fraud article denotes imposter scams, online shopping scams, and prizes, sweepstakes, and lottery scams as the three most common forms of fraud (O'Shea, 2022). These scams provide quick cash for attackers with little recourse for victims. They require little to no programming experience and are very easy to implement.

Imposter scams often involve automated calls where prerecorded machine voices pose as a trusted family member, friend, or reputable company to ask for your credit card information. Unsuspecting victims often fall for these scams because they are exploited by their emotions and care for the supposed recipient who appears to be in distress. Receiving a phone call that requests money should always raise a red flag. Emails that appear to be sent from trusted friends or family can easily be spoofed. Ensuring that the email originated from a friend or family member by calling them directly is the best way to ensure they did, in fact, send the email.

Online shopping scams easily occur in an era where websites are easily made. Victims are encouraged to enter credit card information into malicious forms that appear legitimate. Receiving an email that directs purchases via a URL should always raise a red flag. Like phishing emails, the recipient must always double-check a link URL before accessing the website. Emails that contain grammatical or spelling errors are more likely to be spam, phishing, or online shopping scams. Links can sometimes be spelled incorrectly but made to look correct at first glance. For example, a phishing website made to look like the popular social media giant MySpace called itself rnyspace.com (RNYSPACE). If one were not extremely careful in taking time to assess the domain name, they would likely not notice that the domain was not myspace.

Prizes, sweepstakes, and lottery scams run rampant and should always be considered a red flag because things in life are often not really free. Even when prizes are legitimate, there are often strings attached.

References

O’Shea, B. (2022, November 17). The 10 most common types of fraud. Experian. https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/most-common-types-of-fraud/

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