Scamming is as old as humanity. In fact, its underlying concepts have remained much the same throughout history. All that’s changed is the channels through which scammers operate. Unfortunately, digital technology has made it much easier for scammers to hide. Fortunately, it’s still straightforward to protect yourself against them.
Understanding the basics of scams
Fundamentally, all scams are confidence tricks. Confidence tricks are easiest to perform when people are off-guard. Some types of scams exploit situations where people are expected to be off-guard. Others aim to push people off-guard, often through leveraging hope or fear.
Scammers may link their scams to real-world events to give them extra credibility. They will also try to put victims under time pressure to minimise the victim’s chance to see through them.
Overview of common scams
Although scams are all much the same at their core, they differ in the way they’re presented. Presentation styles can be grouped into common themes.
Authority scams
Scammers purport to represent government agencies or major companies. They may ask for personal details, payment or both. HMRC scams have been doing the rounds for years. Scammers claim the recipient is due a tax refund and needs to provide their details. With the recent cost-of-living payments, scammers have now been claiming to represent the DWP. Victims have been asked to provide their details to claim their payment.
Tech support scams are simply a variation of authority scams. The scammers demand payment for correcting a problem. This problem may be non-existent or one that they’ve created.
Prize scams and investment scams
These work along similar lines. Scammers claim to have a prize or a great investment opportunity for the victim. They may simply ask for the victim’s details to claim it. Alternatively, they may ask for payment to release the prize or the details of the investment. In prize scams, this fee can be described as a processing fee or similar.
Romance scams and emergency scams
Likewise, romance scams and emergency scams also work along similar lines. Romance scams are essentially what they sound like. The scammer makes the victim believe that they are in a romantic relationship. They then persuade the victim to send them money.
Emergency scams leverage existing relationships. They may send messages from hijacked social media accounts asking for financial help. Alternatively, they may ask for aid for an appeal.
Protecting yourself from scams
In theory, modern scammers have a range of high-tech tools at their disposal including deep-fake AI. In practice, these tools are still so expensive and/or difficult to use that they are only likely to be used against targets with a very high value.
Regular scams tend to be very basic in nature. This means that you only need to remember some basic rules to protect yourself from them. These are as follows:
Always check who you’re dealing with using reliable sources. In particular, never click on any links you are sent. Instead, navigate directly to the real website and search for the page on it.
If something sounds too good/bad to be true it probably is.
Never give personal details or money under time pressure unless it’s directly to someone you know well.
You also need to practise basic cybersecurity on all your online-capable devices. Your computer, phone and tablet should all have proper security software. When manufacturers bring out updates for them, these should be applied promptly. Smart devices should also have firmware updates applied promptly.
Last but definitely not least, keep an eye on your credit reports. If you see any unusual activity, follow up on it. Even if it’s not a scam, it may be a mistake that needs to be corrected.
