The only way to fight phone and email scams is to educate people about them.

My phone rings and its not a phone number I know, but I'm expecting a job interview so I answer it.

Scammer: [Hello this is PayPal. We are trying to confirm you made a purchase of $800.]

I hang up my phone and open my PayPal mobile app to try to make sure it isn't real.  I hadn't used PayPal in months. Nothing. I use the Contact Us link and send them a message with the scammer's phone number and what they said. 

Then I go to my bank's mobile app and make sure there wasn't an attempted purchase because I had less than 800 in my bank at the moment and I didn't want to put up with the overdraft fees because someone made a purchase. Not seeing anything I go to the contact us option and call them because my bank is AWESOME and has really great customer service (which is why I've been with them for over a decade) The person I talked to agreed it was prob a scam and hadn't touched my actual bank account, but spent a couple of minutes making sure that there wasn't any pending purchases that I couldn't see. (I hadn't bought anything in over a week, so it would have been easy to notice) I also gave my bank the scammer's phone number and all the information I had on them and the agent promised to forward it to their fraud department but was very honest about not knowing if it would get anywhere since I wasn't a victim. I told them I didn't care. If them having the phone number stops someone else from being a victim, that is enough for me. 

I hung up and went about my life. 

Look, until last year when I got extremely sick and couldn't work anymore, I was the type of person who struggled living paycheck to paycheck. You know, poor. I was almost never targeted by scammers. And when one finally did hit me, I stayed long enough to find out who they pretended to be and then hung up on them and called the real people, WHO ALWAYS THANKED ME FOR CHECKING, and said more people should. 

There are a lot of scammers out there pretending to be Amazon, a bank, PayPal, Microsoft, Lowes, IRS, FBI anything that they think will make you click on them.  If you can give them a call, they are pretty sure they have you, and they will do ANYTHING to get what they want, threaten you, give you a sob story, guilt you. A lot of these are organized and have scripts to follow.

Look, if anybody, even people on your contact list, call you and ask for money or say they have a refund for you, or your warrantee is about to expire. Maybe they just ask "Is this [your name]" or tell you to press a number to confirm something. 

DONT SAY ANYTHING, JUST HANG UP

I don't know if its still a thing, but there was a hug trend in scams a while back that just verbally acknowledging them or pressing a button was used as YOUR LEGAL CONSENT TO THE SCAM. Which meant you honestly couldn't take any action against them. 

And the reason why say if ANYBODY, even people on your contact list, is because it is entirely possible to spoof the caller ID. Don't ask me how, I'm not *that* tech savvy, mainly because I don't want to know. 

If you get an email, I don't care how real it looks, if it is asking for personal information, if it is offering you money, a refund or other hooks scammers use, DO NOT CLICK ANYTHING. 

Instead, if you have the mobile app on your phone, go use that and contact them. If you have it in your list of bookmarks, go use that. All else fails? Google the company and do your best to find a real link to the company contacting you. And contact them that way. 

It's like if you are driving down a major interstate in the middle of the night and there is no other cars around.  You suddenly see flashing lights behind you, you are being pulled over. DO NOT PULL OVER IN A DARK AREA. Slow down, put on your hazards to show them you acknowledge them. If you have a cell phone CALL 9-1-1 or whatever your local police number is. MAKE SURE ITS A REAL COP. Every real cop I know will understand if you drive to a near by safe location. If you call 9-1-1 dispatch will tell them that you are going to safe location. 

Real cops are not tools, they want you safe and following the law

(please note I said real cops okay? I understand that sadly not every cop is a real cop)

Now maybe you're a little tech savvy and curious about who's sending you the email, or where the links are going. Well... depending on who and what you use for an email client, seeing who sent the email is pretty easy. 

But lets talk about how to see where the links are going. I have a few personal ads on my blog that I have no qualms using them to explain how to find out where a link is going without going to the link. In fact, I'm going to use my amazon ad because if you click the link, you should be wary of it unless you are familiar with some of Amazons GREAT programs.

So, to your left, do you see that BRIGHT GREEN AMAZON AD?

If you right click it and select "Copy link address" and find somewhere safe to paste it (if you are unsure DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR ADDRESS BAR, use something like notepad, word or notepad++ like I use.) 

Look, there's a reason, why I don't make gifs or how to okay? They look like this. But what is important is that hopefully from my poor attempt you can CLEARLY see what I did enough to be able to mimic it yourself. 

So that link might be pretty small, but I wanted to show you me dropping it in notepad++

The link is https://www.amazon.com/?tag=ariethninja-20&linkCode=ez

:/ thanks amazon, its suppose to be https://smile.amazon.com/?tag=ariethninja-20&linkCode=ez

This is a REAL link to amazon, and by clicking it and buying stuff, Amazon gives me a small portion of the profits of your sales and supposedly I know WHAT you bought, but not who you are. (I'm new to the this program, but the people I know who use it say "thanks for buying a kit to upgrade your car, just wow, that's a lot of money"

you can find out more information https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/home and guess what, if you don't trust that link, which I understand. You can contact amazon customer service and ask them if its real, you can google amazon affiliate and find out that information that way.  DO YOUR HOMEWORK, PLEASE. 

Also, I honestly believe everybody should be shopping on amazon using smile.amazon.com 

like the username-20, adding smile to the link takes no money out of your pocket, amazon just shares some of the profit it is making from your sale and donate it to a charity of your choice. I'm lazy, I'm throwing up the first link I found that had more information about it https://smile.amazon.com/b/ref=sma_se_smaf_llm_lm?_encoding=UTF8&node=15576745011

Oh, have you noticed that I've been dropping links in this post but not making them clickable? Its because I don't want you blindly clicking links. I want you to know that if you go to a URL that I have in here, it is the URL I put and not some fake link. (okay, that is a clickable link, but it pulls up my blog's home page.)

Now, not every robot that calls you is going to be a scam, *looks at her bank.* My bank has a habit if they think someone stole your card they robo call your number and give you the purchase amount, time, and some other information asking if it was you approved.

They never ask for your personal information because they know that if they call the phone number on their file they are calling the person who is suppose to be in charge of the account.  They don't need my name they don't need any information from me if all I have to do is agree that I bought something with my card at Pay*Pal, the item they were told, the day that I bought it (with in 10 minutes of buying it) and the whole amount. If I say yes, they thank me and hang up, If I say no they immediately connect me to customer service who will then confirm I am who I say I am. I am allowed to hang up and call the number on the back of my credit card before giving out the information. 

I honestly prefer this method over their old method which was if you didn't tell them you were going overseas or to a faire or convention and made purchases from several different places they just turned off your card until you could contact them and then they turned it back on. Once I went to the drive in 2 hours from where I lived, paid 22 bucks for me and my date to see two movies with my card, and then tried to pay 30 bucks halfway home, but had to call them because they thought it wasn't me so they turned it off.  Thankfully, Customer Service is open 24 hours and they answer pretty quick at 1 am. 

Mobile banking with a Smart Phone IS AWESOME

Debit card, Online Banking, those are GREAT. But some banks have really taken the whole Mobile app thing and done awesome stuff. And where they could incorporate it into their on line banking they have. My bank cant be the only one who offers multiple ways to log into my mobile app. I will admit to having a favorite way, and yes, I admit isn't not the most secure way. But considering the weakness, I don't really mind. But just because I have this favorite way, every now and then on the app, and every time I manage to remember the password on the computer, the few times I use it (because the app does almost everything), it demands a second factor.  And I'm given options. Push to a trusted electronic device (all mine are Samsung, but they tell which on I'm currently on when I used them last to access my bank), the will call me and I have to give them my verbal password which is different than my typed one, they will text or email me a one time code to what they have on file. And if I'm logging in from a weird area, they send me a message via their internal email saying they noticed.

Some banks, I know of at least one other, are willing to push notifications at you every time something happens on your account and my bank at least will let you pick what you are okay with being pushed if anything. 

BUT... and you can prob guess what I'm about to say. Before you download the app, be on the phone or in person with your bank and let them confirm that you are in fact, downloading THEIR app and not a scam. 

What do you do about the attempted scam?

You have several options

1. The first is ignore it, which I don't recommend 
• By doing nothing you are letting them scam other people
2. The second option is to call them and waste their time. 
• Honestly, this makes you a hero in my eyes!
• Every minute you can keep them on the phone is one minute they aren't talking to a real victim.
• But be careful, they can get super aggressive, unless you are set up like https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC9EjyMN_hx5NdctLBx5X7w don't involve even fake personal info. 
• *record and post if you can, spread awareness
3. Forward the scam to the company they are pretending to be! And hope they will do something about it
• This is what I use to to
• For the companies that care they will use the attacks to shore up their defenses and be ready if someone comes after them going why are you demanding money or whatever
4. Take screenshots and post on social media with the label of warning, new scam alert!
• This should be done regardless, it doesn't take very long.
• Or if you can't screen shot post all known scammer info! 
• This helps everybody know that number to be a scam.
5. Another option is to find people like the https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw  and others
• Some take scam information and call scammers and waste their time, or use magic to find them and hand them over to the authorities 
6. Always, always there is an option to report it to the proper authorities!
• They are doing their best to at least keep track if not stop ever scam they find

But regardless of if someone tried to scam you, the absolute best thing you can do is spread awareness.

This is going to be a thing while there is people who don't know it's fake.

Mostly those over 65

How do you share awareness?

Several ways, but if you can get your grandparents to watch "this super funny video with you" and get them to share it with all their friends. 

(I watched to many this morning)

There are ones that explain how these scams work 

While showing them that people are fighting back
like in this AWESOME video

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VrKW58MS12g&ab_channel=MarkRoberHow

or some people who do things to mess with them like delete all the scammers files  like this guy did. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq8cKjdNpCo

another great video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qetP3tV0UY8