Phone calls are not always good news. In fact, a good number of calls are routinely made by scammers. In 2019 they accounted for almost half of calls and these numbers may rise further in 2020.
Cybercrime incidents and phone scams are so prevalent these days that the next call you receive could be a call or message from a scammer trying to steal your money.
1. Call: “Your credit card has been blocked”
It is possible to receive phone calls from scammers posing as banking or banking personnel. To show you that they are “real” workers, they are able to tell you your credit card number and expiration date, so you can calm down. While they have all that information, they will scare us by telling us that the bank is blocking the card for some discrepancies in the account. Of course, they claim to be able to fix everything, but for this they need to access the account and, therefore, they need the PIN of their card. Note: never share your PIN with anyone, as doing so will grant them access to your bank account, allowing them to withdraw all money from the account.
2. Beware of public places
Scammers can take advantage of everyday tasks that seem innocuous, such as checking our bank account balance or charging our mobile phone on a public USB port, to exploit personal information for their benefit. To keep our data safe and prevent it from being used by potential scammers, it is imperative to understand the threats we face. One of the weaknesses of mobiles comes from the loading port. Think twice before plugging your mobile into a public USB connector for fast charging in a cafe or airport, because every time we use a mobile port we can be vulnerable to viruses or malware. Can you imagine taking a used toothbrush lying on the floor and starting to use it? It would never occur to you, right? Well, extrapolate this example to what we just told. Hackers can modify public ports to install malicious software or even directly take information from our phone. To avoid this risk, always use your USB cable that can be plugged into a standard power outlet or use an external battery.
3. Call: “Technical support, we are here to help you”.
With the development of the IT cells of scammers, it is also possible that they may pose as technical support services for technology companies with the intention of helping us get rid of a computer virus that we were not aware of. They will ask us to download software to share our computer with them -to help us more easily, of course-, requesting remote control access from our PC. While they are “helping” us, they are likely to download all of our personal information in the background. It is also possible that after the hijacking of our data they will blackmail us so they will only return it to us if we pay a certain amount of money.
4. Beware of phone number theft
Scammers are stealing phone numbers, which can leave us vulnerable to other forms of identity theft. How do they do that? They call our mobile service provider pretending to be us and confirm certain key information. They then transfer the phone number to your device. You probably won’t find out until you try to make a call and see that the SIM card has been deactivated. The problem is not only this. Since phone numbers are also commonly used as security keys, hackers can access other accounts once they have access to the phone account. Don’t skimp on spending time on security questions and answers. It will be worth it.
5. Message scams
They can be of many types: They can send us a text message that seems to be from a friend, commenting on you to see if you catch up. Once you reply to the text or call, they may charge you a high rate for each call and the charges will increase within a second. Another common text scam is one that tries to look like the bank is sending us a text message. The message will warn us that there has been fraudulent activity on the account and ask us to visit a website or call a number. Scammers can gain access to our personal information and bank account information if we do any of these things. To avoid falling for this scam, be careful with the text messages you reply to.
