Have you ever been scammed before? Have you ever seen your money disappear from your reach without any way to get it back? Have you ever been approached with a financial decision that is too good to be true? Have you lost money through that funny financial decision? Well, you have been scammed. In this article, we will be addressing the topic: “top 5 scam techniques: what you need to know”.
Most people around the world have either been scammed or know someone who has been scammed before. Could be scammed either physically or virtually through their online interactions with criminals targeting them.
Scams are responsible for financial losses going to tens of billions of dollars every year worldwide. As much as regulatory agencies, law enforcement and other stakeholders are trying to get the better of this menace, it tends to evolve and evade their tactics.
Before we dive into the top 5 scam techniques and what you need to know, let us first find out what a scam is.
What is a Scam?
According to sources on the internet, we can tell that a scam is any deceptive scheme designed by criminals to trick individuals or businesses into parting with their money, personal information, or other valuable assets. These tricks are used to exploit people's ignorance, fear, and trust. Scammers always show themselves as legitimate entities trying to do things in favor of the victim.
There are various examples of forms of scams and how to scam. They could either be online or physically under the guise of a person-to-person deception. The rise of digital technology and the advancement of social media have given scammers the edge, helping them develop more sophisticated techniques to perpetrate their menace.
What are Scam Techniques?
Scam techniques can be defined as the various methods scammers used to deceive or manipulate people. These techniques often use emotions, urgency, missing information and an appeal to the victims greed to get their desired effect. Some of the most common scam techniques are fake investment opportunities, phishing emails, identity theft and impersonation.
As time goes on and as law enforcement and other agencies involved try to fight against this menace, so do the scammers continually evolve, adapting to new technologies and trends to achieve their desired effects and get to more victims.
What is the importance of being informed about scam techniques?
It is very important to be informed about the various techniques scammers use against the victims. This will help people protect themselves from being victims of the scammers in the first place. It is important to understand that scammers can target anybody or any organization with any background, taking advantage of their financial insecurity, their lack of awareness or the loopholes in their technology.
Keeping abreast of these techniques helps you or your organization minimize the risk of being victims of scammers. It also ensures that you are adequately prepared and take the best actions to counter these scams, especially in this age, where scammers are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to perpetrate their crimes.
Top 5 Scam Techniques
Now to the crust of this article, here are 5 of the most prevalent scam techniques. We shall also be including the various ways to identify, protect yourself and recover your assets from these scams.
1. Phishing scams
Phishing scams are any communication including emails, text messages on my phone calls and more designed to trick the victim into revealing their personal and sensitive information to the scammer. This information includes passwords, login information, credit card numbers, social security details and other financial or sensitive personal information.
To access the victims, scammers pretend to be legitimate employees of financial institutions, government agencies or reputable companies.
In order to detect phishing scams, you need to look out for the fact that these emails and communications do contain urgent requests for these personal information. You can also note that the sender's address is suspicious or slightly altered from the ones used by the legitimate ones.
Furthermore, the links used by these false communications mostly lead to fake websites designed to steal the login details or user information of the victim.
You can prevent phishing scams by avoiding suspicious links or downloading attachments from email addresses or senders that you do not know.
You should also verify requests for personal information by contacting the company they are impersonating and asking them if the request is legitimate or not.
You can further use scam detection techniques such as email filters and two factor authentication to ensure that you do not fall victim to phishing scammers.
In case you have already fallen victim to this scam, you can minimize the damage and increase the chances of recovery by changing your password immediately if you entered your credentials on a fake site.
You can also engage two-factor authentication on your account to put a layer of security; and report the phishing attempt to your email or communication service provider; or law enforcements like your police and cyber crime units.
Another strategy is to alert your bank and monitor your bank statements or accounts for any unauthorized transaction.
2. Investment and Ponzi schemes
These scams are amongst the most common scams. These scams thrive on promising their victims hi returns for Investments at very little or no risks. They use money from the victims who are targeted as the investors to pay returns to earlier investors giving people the illusion of profitability. One characteristic feature of this type of scam is that the scheme eventually collapses and the investors lose their money to the scammers who are in the wind.
You can detect investment and Ponzi schemes through the unrealistic promises of guaranteed profits. You can also detect it by the amount of pressure mounted by the scammer, for you to invest quickly without giving enough information about the investment itself. Another way of detecting Ponzi schemes is the lack of transparency about the investment process itself.
When you detect this type of scam, you can prevent it by conducting thorough research on the investment before you begin to invest. If you find out that it is phoney, it is best to stay away from it.
You should also be skeptical about any investment opportunity that sounds too good to be true. Nothing in this world goes for nothing.
Furthermore, you should consult your financial advisor to find out if the opportunity is truly legitimate. You can also prevent yourself from falling victim to these scams by verifying the credentials presented by the scammers.
If you eventually fall victim to investment and Ponzi schemes you can minimize the damage it will do to you by stopping to send money to the fraudulent scheme. You can also gather all the evidence of your transactions with the scheme including email receipts and more; to support your case when you report it to the financial, regulatory authorities, and law enforcement. You can furthermore, seek legal action, or join a class-action lawsuit if the scam has affected multiple victims.
3. Online shopping scams
Many of these types of scams happen when scammers create e-commerce platforms or formulate social Media ads offering popular goods and products at extremely low prices. Anyone who is unfortunate to be drawn to this type of scam will never receive the items or get fake products instead.
In order to identify this type of scam, amongst the other types of scams, you should look out for websites that have poor designs or have grammatical errors, or websites that do not share the contact details of the seller.
Also look out for prices on goods and commodities that are significantly lower than the market value. In addition, you can check if the products put on have no clarification or return policy.
In order to prevent being a victim of online shopping scams, you will need to use one or all of these scams prevention techniques: you need to shop from reputable and well-known retailers. You also need to check online reviews to verify the business' legitimacy.
In addition to the last two, you should also use secure payment methods that offer buyer protection, so that you can recover your fonts if you find out that the product is a fake or you were scammed.
If you do become a victim of online shopping scams, you can take the following actions to minimize the damage being done to your finances. Firstly, contact your payment provider which can be your credit card company or your digital wallet provider. You can also report the fake website to consumer protection agencies or online scam watch dogs for investigation. Also, you can leave reviews on scam reporting platforms, so no other person will be in danger of trading with them. Another thing to do is to monitor your account for fraudulent charges if you had entered your payment details on the scammer platform.
4. Tech support scams
This type of scam happens when scammers impersonate tech support agents. They claim that your computer or device has a virus or a security issue and would like to help you get it cleared. They convince their victims to provide them remote access to their devices and pay for the phony services.
If you do give them access to your device they will steal your sensitive, personal information; and monitor your activities as they now have remote access to your device.
You could have your identity used to perpetrate other crimes with you being the decoy. In order to detect this type of scam you need to look out for unsolicited phone calls or pop-up ads claiming that your device is infected by a virus or needs an upgrade.
Also watch out for requests for remote access or payment for unnecessary repairs on your device or software. You can also look out for the lack of official company branding or verification from the person reaching out to you.
In order to prevent text support scams, you should never trust unsolicited text support calls or messages. You should also contact your device manufacturer or official support directly if you have any issues with your product.
Also, it is advisable to use scam detection techniques like checking the sender's information before getting yourself involved with him.
In case you fall victim to tech support scams, you will need to take a number of actions to minimize the damage done to your finances. One of them is to disconnect your device from the internet, if you have allowed the scammer remote access to it.
Also scan your system using a reputable antivirus software to search for malware or errors on your computer system. You would also need to change all your important passwords if you have shared any of those credentials with the perceived text support person. Also, it's advised to report this scam to tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google and even the cyber time authorities in your region or country.
5. Romance scams
This is one of the most common types of scams and it involves fraudsters building online relationships with victims to gain their trust and eventually ask them for money. This type of scam happens mostly on dating websites and social media platforms.
You can detect a romance scam if the scammer quickly professes their love for you or some sort of strong emotional attachment. You can also find out that the communication is a scam if this scammer avoids in-person meetings or video calls. In addition to the last two, you can also find out that it is a scam if the person you are communicating with requests for money due to emergencies or travel expenses or medical bills.
To prevent being a victim of romance scams you should be cautious of individuals who are too eager to get into a relationship with you. Also make sure that you never send money to anybody you have not met in person. Lastly you can use reverse image searches to check if the person is using a cloned profile of someone else.
In case you fall victim to romance scams, all you need to do to reduce the damage that has been wrought, is by using the below scam recovery techniques
Stop all communications with the scammer immediately. Also make sure that you do not send any more money to him and Report the transactions to your bank. Gather all the chat records and evidence to support a police report. Report the scammers profile to the dating platform or the social media website. You can also seek emotional support from trusted friends, family or support groups if it is getting to you psychologically.
Final words
Now that we have checked out the top 5 scams and what you should know about them, you should understand that scam does come in various forms; and as awareness and vigilance is the key to to stop yourself from being a victim.
We have checked out the various detection and prevention techniques available and what to do if you are a victim of these scams. If you fall victim to a scam you should act quickly and involve the required authorities to ensure that you may minimize the damage it causes to your finances and your life.
In case you need actions that can help keep yourself or business from being victims of any of these common scam techniques, you can book a demo with Youverify.
At Youverify, we offer you the best solutions to help keep your personal and business activities and finances within legal ramifications. We are trusted by over 2,000 individuals and organizations worldwide, bringing them peace of mind. Trust us today!