In recent years, phone, text and email scams have become more and more common as we continue to rely on technology. Although many people believe that they could never fall for such scams, the methods used in these scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated, causing people to lose thousands of pounds in savings.
Knowing about the most common scams you could encounter can help you protect yourself against them in the future. In this article, you’ll learn about three major types of scams: phishing, spoofing and one ring scams.
One Ring Scams
We’re all familiar with receiving unknown calls. In fact, many of us type in unknown numbers like ‘0800 761 3362’ into online databases to discover if other people have answered the call and identified it as a scam, which helps us to learn whether we can answer that call or not.
However, one type of call you should never answer is a ‘one ring scam’, which is where an unknown international caller hangs up after only letting your phone ring once. This annoying tactic, which is repeated multiple times, is designed to pique your curiosity (or frustration) in order to persuade you to call the number back. However, your call will then be routed to an expensive premium rate number that’ll charge high fees for every minute you’re on the call. As a result, the scammer will convince you to stay on the call by saying you’ve won a prize, or they may just play hold music and hope that you keep waiting.
Overall, you could end up losing a lot of money just by answering a phone call or calling someone back. If you’re not expecting an international call, it’s best to never answer them.
Spoofing
Even if you recognise a phone number, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a call or text is legitimate. This is because of something called ‘spoofing’ – a method that scammers use to disguise their real number and display a different number on the caller ID. This can make you trust the caller and answer the phone, allowing the scammers to have a better chance of convincing you to do what they want.
Spoofing can be done with phone calls, emails and texts – as long as the phone number or email address is imitating someone else, this is an example of spoofing. This scam is particularly dangerous as people may blindly trust the scammer if they think they’re from a trusted organisation. As a result, you should never assume something can’t be a scam because you recognise the phone number or email domain. If in doubt, call the organisation yourself to check.
Phishing
Phishing is a type of scam where criminals attempt to access your personal information by sending an email with a malicious link. Often, phishing attempts use spoofing too in order to make the dangerous email look like it comes from a legitimate source, so you can’t ignore the possibility that an email is a phishing attempt even if the email address looks correct. To check if an email is a scam, you should look out for things like poor grammar, odd-looking company logos, strange symbols and a false sense of urgency (e.g., ‘your account has been hacked’).
