The world’s most common scam

And how to avoid it

I hear about a lot of different scams. Investment scams, Covid-booster scams, crypto-scams, invoice scams. But there is one which is more effective than all of them. I call it the ‘you’ve been scammed scam’.

It’s pretty simple really. A fraudster phones or texts, pretending to be from a company or organisation you use: your bank, Amazon, phone provider et cetera. They tell you there has been some suspicious activity on your account, and want to go through a few security questions so they can iron it all out for you. And you wind up handing over bank card numbers, three digit security codes, passwords. Enough for these fraudsters to then actually steal your money.