In an age rife with technological advancement, it's no surprise that scammers are finding more and more ways to access our personal information and try to steal from us through manipulation tactics. We've all been there before: you start getting phone calls from an unidentifiable or unlisted number, and then they leave voicemails claiming that you owe money, that your personal information has been stolen and compromised, etc. These are intimidation tactics; scammers try to scare their victims in any way that they can so that the victim becomes more vulnerable.
While this can be a bit terrifying, there are plenty of ways to tell whether or not you're being targeted as the victim of a scamming attack. In the video below, a woman explains that she has been getting repeated phone calls from a number she doesn't recognize, and the person on the other end of the line is pretending to be from the IRS. This person claims that the woman owes money to the IRS and will need to pay it to avoid a lawsuit from the IRS, but this woman has paid attention to the subtle details. As she deals with the scammer, she informs us of the flaws in his story and points out all the reasons for knowing that this isn't a legitimate call. She decides that it's only fair to scare her scammer in return, and her method is truly brilliant. She finally bluffs and says, "I work for the IRS and this kind of thing just doesn't happen, so I'm kind of confused." This one little comment puts and en to the harassment in an instant!
If you ever find yourself in a situation like the one in the video below where you feel your personal information is being compromised, trust your instincts and take proper precautions in disclosing information to the person contacting you. If anyone ever calls you tclaiming that you owe money to an organization such as the IRS, you can simply call that organization directly to settle whether or not the claims are true. If anyone calls you and asks for secure information such as your full social security number, this should register as a huge red flag! Even banks, government organizations, and debt collectors will only ask you for the last four digits of your social (when they ask at all); remember that the organizations that are supposed to have that kind of personal information will already have it on file and should only need to use it to verify your identity over the phone.
Has anything like this ever happened to you before? How did you know you were dealing with a scammer? How did you handle the situation? Let us know in the comments below!
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